Search results for: fish processing

Authors: Arojojoye Oluwatosin Adetola, Nwaechefu Olajumoke Olufunlayo, Ademola Adetokunbo Oyagbemi, Jeremiah Moyinoluwalogo Afolabi, Asaolu Racheal Oluwabukola

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The effects of man’s activities on the environment include depletion of natural resources alongside pollution of water bodies. Petroleum exploration in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria has compromised the aquatic environment with grave consequences on the entire ecosystem. In this study, we assessed the environmental safety of Araromi River, located in an oil-producing area in Ondo State, in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria by determining the levels of heavy metals (copper, cadmium, chromium, nickel, lead) and some biomarkers of oxidative stress (malondialdehyde, glutathione-S-transferase, glutathione peroxidase, catalase, superoxide dismutase, myeloperoxidase and reduced glutathione) in Clarias gariepinus (350-400g) from the river using standard methods. Clarias gariepinus from a clean fish farm in the same geographical location as the reference site (Ilesannmi fishery) was used as a control. Water samples from both sites were also analysed for some physicochemical parameters, heavy metals, and bacterial contamination. Our findings show a significant increase in malondialdehyde level (index of lipid peroxidation) as well as alterations in antioxidant status in the organs of Clarias gariepinus from Araromi River compared with control. A significant increase in bacterial contaminants, heavy metal pollutants, and particulate matter deposits were also observed in the water sample from Araromi River compared with control. In conclusion, high levels of indicators of environmental pollution observed in the water sample from Araromi River coupled with induction of oxidative stress in Clarias gariepinus from the river show that Araromi River is polluted; therefore, consumption of fishes and other aquatic organisms from the river may be unsafe for the people in that community.

Keywords: Araromi River, Clarias gariepinus, environmental pollution, heavy metals, oxidative stress

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Authors: Jalal Karam

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The methods of Fourier, Laplace, and Wavelet Transforms provide transfer functions and relationships between the input and the output signals in linear time invariant systems. This paper shows the equivalence among these three methods and in each case presenting an application of the appropriate (Fourier, Laplace or Wavelet) to the convolution theorem. In addition, it is shown that the same holds for a direct integration method. The Biorthogonal wavelets Bior3.5 and Bior3.9 are examined and the zeros distribution of their polynomials associated filters are located. This paper also presents the significance of utilizing wavelets as effective tools in processing speech signals for common multimedia applications in general, and for recognition and compression in particular. Theoretically and practically, wavelets have proved to be effective and competitive. The practical use of the Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) in processing and analysis of speech is then presented along with explanations of how the human ear can be thought of as a natural wavelet transformer of speech. This generates a variety of approaches for applying the (CWT) to many paradigms analysing speech, sound and music. For perception, the flexibility of implementation of this transform allows the construction of numerous scales and we include two of them. Results for speech recognition and speech compression are then included.

Keywords: continuous wavelet transform, biorthogonal wavelets, speech perception, recognition and compression

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Authors: Syed Basit Ali Shah Bukhari, Yan Qiang, Saad Abdul Rauf, Syed Saqlaina Bukhari

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Text Classification is the methodology to classify any given text into the respective category from a given set of categories. It is highly important and vital to use proper set of pre-processing , feature selection and classification techniques to achieve this purpose. In this paper we have used different ensemble techniques along with variance in feature selection parameters to see the change in overall accuracy of the result and also on some other individual class based features which include precision value of each individual category of the text. After subjecting our data through pre-processing and feature selection techniques , different individual classifiers were tested first and after that classifiers were combined to form ensembles to increase their accuracy. Later we also studied the impact of decreasing the classification categories on over all accuracy of data. Text classification is highly used in sentiment analysis on social media sites such as twitter for realizing people’s opinions about any cause or it is also used to analyze customer’s reviews about certain products or services. Opinion mining is a vital task in data mining and text categorization is a back-bone to opinion mining.

Keywords: Natural Language Processing, Ensemble Classifier, Bagging Classifier, AdaBoost

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Authors: Cherry Yieng Siang Ling, Joong Hee Lee, Myung Hwan Yun

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The quality of a product to be usable has become the basic requirement in consumer’s perspective while failing the requirement ends up the customer from not using the product. Identifying usability issues from analyzing quantitative and qualitative data collected from usability testing and evaluation activities aids in the process of product design, yet the lack of studies and researches regarding analysis methodologies in qualitative text data of usability field inhibits the potential of these data for more useful applications. While the possibility of analyzing qualitative text data found with the rapid development of data analysis studies such as natural language processing field in understanding human language in computer, and machine learning field in providing predictive model and clustering tool. Therefore, this research aims to study the application capability of text processing algorithm in analysis of qualitative text data collected from usability activities. This research utilized datasets collected from LG neckband headset usability experiment in which the datasets consist of headset survey text data, subject’s data and product physical data. In the analysis procedure, which integrated with the text-processing algorithm, the process includes training of comments onto vector space, labeling them with the subject and product physical feature data, and clustering to validate the result of comment vector clustering. The result shows 'volume and music control button' as the usability feature that matches best with the cluster of comment vectors where centroid comments of a cluster emphasized more on button positions, while centroid comments of the other cluster emphasized more on button interface issues. When volume and music control buttons are designed separately, the participant experienced less confusion, and thus, the comments mentioned only about the buttons' positions. While in the situation where the volume and music control buttons are designed as a single button, the participants experienced interface issues regarding the buttons such as operating methods of functions and confusion of functions' buttons. The relevance of the cluster centroid comments with the extracted feature explained the capability of text processing algorithms in analyzing qualitative text data from usability testing and evaluations.

Keywords: usability, qualitative data, text-processing algorithm, natural language processing

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Authors: M. Y. Abubakar, Ipinjolu J. K., Yuzine B. Esa, Magawata I., Hassan W. A., Turaki A. A.

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Catfish (Heterobranchus spp.) is a major freshwater fish that are widely distributed in Nigeria waters and are gaining rapid aquaculture expansion. However, indiscriminate artificial crossbreeding of the species with others poses a threat to their biodiversity. There is a paucity of information about the genetic variability, hence this insight on the genetic variability is badly needed, not only for the species conservation but for aquaculture expansion. In this study, we tested the level of Genetic diversity, population differentiation and phylogenetic relationship analysis on 35 individuals of two populations of Heterobranchus bidorsalis and 29 individuals of three populations of Heterobranchus longifilis using the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (mtDNA COI) gene sequence. Nucleotide sequences of 650 bp fragment of the COI gene of the two species were compared. In the whole 4 and 5 haplotypes were distinguished in the populations of H. bidorsalis & H. longifilis with accession numbers (MG334168 - MG334171 & MG334172 to MG334176) respectively. Haplotypes diversity indices revealed a range of 0.59 ± 0.08 to 0.57 ± 0.09 in H. bidorsalis and 0.000 to 0.001051 ± 0.000945 in H. longifilis population, respectively. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed no significant variation among H. bidorsalis population of the Niger & Benue Rivers, detected significant genetic variation was between the Rivers of Niger, Kaduna and Benue population of H. longifilis. Two main clades were recovered, showing a clear separation between H. bidorsalis and H. longifilis in the phylogenetic tree. The mtDNA COI genes studied revealed high gene flow between populations with no distinct genetic differentiation between the populations as measured by the fixation index (FST) statistic. However, a proportion of population-specific haplotypes was observed in the two species studied, suggesting a substantial degree of genetic distinctiveness for each of the population investigated. These findings present the description of the species character and accessions of the fish’s genetic resources, through gene sequence submitted in Genetic database. The data will help to protect their valuable wild resource and contribute to their recovery and selective breeding in Nigeria.

Keywords: AMOVA, genetic diversity, Heterobranchus spp., mtDNA COI, phylogenetic tree

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Authors: Duckyong Kim, Jong Kang Park, Jong Tae Kim

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DOA (Direction of Arrival) estimation is an important method in array signal processing and has a wide range of applications such as direction finding, beam forming, and so on. In this paper, we briefly introduce the MUSIC (Multiple Signal Classification) Algorithm, one of DOA estimation methods for analyzing several targets. Then we apply the MUSIC algorithm to the two-dimensional antenna array to analyze DOA estimation in 3D space through MATLAB simulation. We also analyze the design factors that can affect the accuracy of DOA estimation through simulation, and proceed with further consideration on how to apply the system.

Keywords: DOA estimation, MUSIC algorithm, spatial spectrum, array signal processing

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Authors: Khanh D.Do, Loi V.Nguyen, Thanh N.Nguyen, Thang M.Nguyen, Vu T.Tran

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Along with the development of Secondary surveillance radar (SSR) in air traffic surveillance systems, the Multipath phenomena has always been a noticeable problem. This following article discusses the geometrical aspect and power aspect of the Multipath interference caused by reflection in SSR and proposes a method to deal with these unwanted multipath targets (ghosts) by false-target position predicting and adaptive target suppressing. A field-experiment example is mentioned at the end of the article to demonstrate the efficiency of this measure.

Keywords: multipath, secondary surveillance radar, digital signal processing, reflection

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Authors: Su Yin Chiam, Qing Xin Zhang, Jaehoon Chung

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Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (ICs) have obtained increased attention in the biosensor community because CMOS technology provides cost-effective and high-performance signal processing at a mass-production level. In order to supply biological samples and reagents effectively to the sensing elements, there are increasing demands for seamless integration of microfluidic components on the fabricated CMOS wafers by post-processing. Although the PDMS microfluidic channels replicated from separately prepared silicon mold can be typically aligned and bonded onto the CMOS wafers, it remains challenging owing the inherently limited aligning accuracy ( > ± 10 μm) between the two layers. Here we present a new post-processing method to create three-dimensional microfluidic components using two different polarities of photoresists, an epoxy-based negative SU-8 photoresist and positive SPR220-7 photoresist. The positive photoresist serves as a sacrificial layer and the negative photoresist was utilized as a structural material to generate three-dimensional structures. Because both photoresists are patterned using a standard photolithography technology, the dimensions of the structures can be effectively controlled as well as the alignment accuracy, moreover, is dramatically improved (< ± 2 μm) and appropriately can be adopted as an alternative post-processing method. To validate the proposed processing method, we applied this technique to build cell-trapping structures. The SU8 photoresist was mainly used to generate structures and the SPR photoresist was used as a sacrificial layer to generate sub-channel in the SU8, allowing fluid to pass through. The sub-channel generated by etching the sacrificial layer works as a cell-capturing site. The well-controlled dimensions enabled single-cell capturing on each site and high-accuracy alignment made cells trapped exactly on the sensing units of CMOS biosensors.

Keywords: SU-8, microfluidic, MEMS, microfabrication

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Authors: Francis Ojo Ologunagba, Monday Olatunbosun Ale, Lewis A. Olutayo

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The economic successes of commercial development of agricultural product processing depend upon the adaptability of each processing stage to mechanization. In maize processing, one of its post-harvest operations that is still facing a major challenge is dehusking. Therefore, a maize dehusking machine that could replace the prevalent traditional method of dehusking maize in developing countries, especially Nigeria was designed, constructed and tested at the Department of Agricultural and Bio-Environmental Engineering Technology, Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo. The basic features of the machine are feeding unit (hopper), housing frame, dehusking unit, drive mechanism and discharge outlets. The machine was tested with maize of 50mm average diameter at 13% moisture content and 2.5mm machine roller clearance. Test results showed appreciable performance with the dehusking efficiency of 92% and throughput capacity of 200 Kg/hr at a machine speed of 400rpm. The estimated production cost of the machine at the time of construction is forty-five thousand, one hundred and eighty nairas (₦45,180) excluding the cost of the electric motor. It is therefore recommended for small and medium-scale maize farmers and processors in Nigeria.

Keywords: construction, dehusking, design, efficiency, maize

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Authors: Archit Yajnik

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Part of Speech Tagging has always been a challenging task in the era of Natural Language Processing. This article presents POS tagging for Nepali text using Hidden Markov Model and Viterbi algorithm. From the Nepali text, annotated corpus training and testing data set are randomly separated. Both methods are employed on the data sets. Viterbi algorithm is found to be computationally faster and accurate as compared to HMM. The accuracy of 95.43% is achieved using Viterbi algorithm. Error analysis where the mismatches took place is elaborately discussed.

Keywords: hidden markov model, natural language processing, POS tagging, viterbi algorithm

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Authors: N. B. Ikenweiwe, A. A. Alimi, N. A. Bamidele, A. O. Ewumi, J. Dairo, I. A. Akinnubi, S. O. Otubusin

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A study on the physical, chemical and biological parameters of the lower course of Ogun River, Isheri-Olofin was carried out between January and December 2014 in order to determine the effects of the anthropogenic activities of the Kara abattoir and domestic waste depositions on the quality of the water. Water samples were taken twice each month at three selected stations A, B and C (based on characteristic features or activity levels) along the water course. Samples were analysed using standard methods for chemical and biological parameters the same day in the laboratory while physical parameters were determined in-situ with water parameters kit. Generally, results of Transparency, Dissolved Oxygen, Nitrates, TDS and Alkalinity fall below the permissible limits of WHO and FEPA standards for drinking and fish production. Results of phosphates, lead and cadmium were also low but still within the permissible limit. Only Temperature and pH were within limit. Low plankton community, (phytoplankton, zooplankton), which ranges from 3, 5 to 40, 23 were as a result of low levels of DO, transparency and phosphate. The presence of coliform bacteria of public health importance like Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris, Aeromonas sp., Shigella sp, Enterobacter aerogenes as well as gram negative bacteria Proteus morganii are mainly indicators of faecal pollution. Fish and other resources obtained from this water stand the risk of being contaminated with these organisms and man is at the receiving end. The results of the physical, chemical and some biological parameters of Isheri, Ogun River, according to this study showed that the live forms of aquatic and fisheries resources there are dwelling under stress as a result of deposition of bones, horns, faecal components, slurry of suspended solids, fat and blood into the water. Government should therefore establish good monitoring system against illegal waste depositions and create education programmes that will enlighten the community on the social, ecological and economic values of the river.

Keywords: water parameters, Isheri Ogun river, anthropogenic activities, Kara abattoir

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Authors: Abdulkader Helwan

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Rheumatoid joint inflammation is characterized as a perpetual incendiary issue which influences the joints by hurting body tissues Therefore, there is an urgent need for an effective intelligent identification system of knee Rheumatoid arthritis especially in its early stages. This paper is to develop a new intelligent system for the identification of Rheumatoid arthritis of the knee utilizing image processing techniques and neural classifier. The system involves two principle stages. The first one is the image processing stage in which the images are processed using some techniques such as RGB to gryascale conversion, rescaling, median filtering, background extracting, images subtracting, segmentation using canny edge detection, and features extraction using pattern averaging. The extracted features are used then as inputs for the neural network which classifies the X-ray knee images as normal or abnormal (arthritic) based on a backpropagation learning algorithm which involves training of the network on 400 X-ray normal and abnormal knee images. The system was tested on 400 x-ray images and the network shows good performance during that phase, resulting in a good identification rate 97%.

Keywords: rheumatoid arthritis, intelligent identification, neural classifier, segmentation, backpropoagation

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Authors: Sehreen Moorat, Mussarat Lakho

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A method of artificial intelligence using digital mammograms data has been proposed in this paper for detection of breast cancer. Many researchers have developed techniques for the early detection of breast cancer; the early diagnosis helps to save many lives. The detection of breast cancer through mammography is effective method which detects the cancer before it is felt and increases the survival rate. In this paper, we have purposed image processing technique for enhancing the image to detect the graphical table data and markings. Texture features based on Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix and intensity based features are extracted from the selected region. For classification purpose, neural network based supervised classifier system has been used which can discriminate between benign and malignant. Hence, 68 digital mammograms have been used to train the classifier. The obtained result proved that automated detection of breast cancer is beneficial for early diagnosis and increases the survival rates of breast cancer patients. The proposed system will help radiologist in the better interpretation of breast cancer.

Keywords: medical imaging, cancer, processing, neural network

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Authors: Pooya Niksiar, Ali Ashrafizadeh, Mehrzad Shams, Amir Hossein Madani

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There are many computationally demanding applications in science and engineering which need efficient algorithms implemented on high performance computers. Recently, Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have drawn much attention as compared to the traditional CPU-based hardware and have opened up new improvement venues in scientific computing. One particular application area is Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), in which mature CPU-based codes need to be converted to GPU-based algorithms to take advantage of this new technology. In this paper, numerical solutions of two classes of discrete fluid flow models via both CPU and GPU are discussed and compared. Test problems include an Eulerian model of a two-dimensional incompressible laminar flow case and a Lagrangian model of a two phase flow field. The CUDA programming standard is used to employ an NVIDIA GPU with 480 cores and a C++ serial code is run on a single core Intel quad-core CPU. Up to two orders of magnitude speed up is observed on GPU for a certain range of grid resolution or particle numbers. As expected, Lagrangian formulation is better suited for parallel computations on GPU although Eulerian formulation represents significant speed up too.

Keywords: CFD, Eulerian formulation, graphics processing units, Lagrangian formulation

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Authors: Tien-Ching Yao, Ching-Ching Lu

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Understanding human language processing is one of the main challenges of current cognitive neuroscience. The aims of the present study were to use a sentence decision task combined with event-related potentials to investigate the psychological reality of "cross-sentence patterns." Therefore, we take the math word problems the experimental materials and use the ERPs' P600 component to verify. In this study, the experimental material consisted of 200 math word problems with three different conditions were used ( multiplication word problems、division word problems type 1、division word problems type 2 ). Eighteen Mandarin native speakers participated in the ERPs study (14 of whom were female). The result of the grand average waveforms suggests a later posterior positivity at around 500ms - 900ms. These findings were tested statistically using repeated measures ANOVAs at the component caused by the stimulus type of different questions. Results suggest that three conditions present significant (P < 0.05) on the Mean Amplitude, Latency, and Peak Amplitude. The result showed the characteristic timing and posterior scalp distribution of a P600 effect. We interpreted these characteristic responses as the psychological reality of "cross-sentence patterns." These results provide insights into the sentence processing issues in linguistic theory and psycholinguistic models of language processing and advance our understanding of how people make sense of information during language comprehension.

Keywords: language processing, sentence comprehension, event-related potentials, cross-sentence patterns

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Authors: Mohammad A. U. Khan, Omar A. Kittaneh, M. Akbar, Tariq M. Khan, Husam A. Bayoud

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The Shannon Entropy measure has been widely used for measuring uncertainty. However, in partial settings, the histogram is used to estimate the underlying distribution. The histogram is dependent on the number of bins used. In this paper, a modification is proposed that makes the Shannon entropy based on histogram consistent. For providing the benefits, two application are picked in medical image processing applications. The simulations are carried out to show the superiority of this modified measure for image segmentation problem. The improvement may be contributed to robustness shown to uneven background in images.

Keywords: Shannon entropy, medical image processing, image segmentation, modification

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Authors: Stepan Papacek, Jiri Jablonsky, Radek Kana, Ctirad Matonoha, Stefan Kindermann

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FRAP (Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching) is a widely used measurement technique to determine the mobility of fluorescent molecules within living cells. While the experimental setup and protocol for FRAP experiments are usually fixed, data processing part is still under development. In this paper, we formulate and solve the problem of data selection which enhances the processing of FRAP images. We introduce the concept of the irrelevant data set, i.e., the data which are almost not reducing the confidence interval of the estimated parameters and thus could be neglected. Based on sensitivity analysis, we both solve the problem of the optimal data space selection and we find specific conditions for optimizing an important experimental design factor, e.g., the radius of bleach spot. Finally, a theorem announcing less precision of the integrated data approach compared to the full data case is proven; i.e., we claim that the data set represented by the FRAP recovery curve lead to a larger confidence interval compared to the spatio-temporal (full) data.

Keywords: FRAP, inverse problem, parameter identification, sensitivity analysis, optimal experimental design

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Authors: A. O. Ogunkeyede, D. Amuchi, A. A. Adebayo

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Heavy metal contaminations in soil have received great attention. Anthropogenic activities such as vehicular emission, industrial activities and constructions have resulted in elevated concentration of heavy metals in the surface soils. The metal particles can be free from the surface soil when they are disturbed and re-entrained in air, which necessitated the need to investigate surface soil at market environment where adults and children are present on daily basis. This study assesses concentration of heavy metal pollution, ecological and health risk factors in surface soil at Effurun market. 8 samples were collected at household material (EMH), fish (EMFs), fish and commodities (EMF-C), Abattoir (EMA 1 & 2), fruit sections (EMF 1 & 2) and lastly main road (EMMR). The samples were digested and analyzed in triplicate for contents of Lead (Pb), Nickel (Ni), Cadmium (Cd) and Copper (Cu). The mean concentration of the Pb mg/kg (112.27 ± 1.12) and Cu mg/kg (156.14 ± 1.10) were highest in the abattoir section (EMA 1). The mean concentrations of the heavy metal were then used to calculate the ecological and health risk for people within the market. Pb contamination at EMMR, EMF 2, EMFs were moderately while Pb shows considerable contamination at EMH, EMA 1, EMA 2 and EMF-C sections of the Effurun market. The ecological risk factor varies between low to moderate pollution for Pb and EMA 1 has the highest potential ecological risk that falls within moderate pollution. The hazard quotient results show that dermal exposure pathway is the possible means of heavy metal exposure to the traders while ingestion is the least sources of exposure to adult. The ingestion suggested that children around the EMA 1 have the highest possible exposure to children due to hand-to-mouth and object-to-mouth behaviour. The results further show that adults at the EMA1 will have the highest exposure to Pb due to inhalation during burning of cow with tyre that contained Pb and Cu. The carcinogenic risk values of most sections were higher than acceptable values, while Ni at EMMR, EMF 1 & 2, EMFs and EMF-C sections that were below the acceptable values. The cancer risk for inhalation exposure pathway for Pb (1.01E+17) shows a significant level of contamination than all the other sections of the market. It suggested that the people working at the Abattoir were very prone to cancer risk.

Keywords: carcinogenic, ecological, heavy metal, risk

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Authors: A. Badran, M. Hollocks, H. Markus

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Background: Common risk factors for cardiovascular disease are associated with age-related cognitive decline. There has been much interest in treating modifiable cardiovascular risk factors in the hope of reducing cognitive decline. However, there is currently no validated neuropsychological test to assess the subclinical cognitive effects of vascular risk. The Brief Memory and Executive Test (BMET) is a clinical screening tool, which was originally designed to be sensitive and specific to Vascular Cognitive Impairment (VCI), an impairment characterised by decline in frontally-mediated cognitive functions (e.g. Executive Function and Processing Speed). Objective: To cross-sectionally assess the validity of the BMET as a measure of the subclinical effects of vascular risk on cognition, in an otherwise healthy elderly cohort. Methods: Data from 346 participants (57 ± 10 years) without major neurological or psychiatric disorders were included in this study, gathered as part of a previous multicentre validation study for the BMET. Framingham Vascular Age was used as a surrogate measure of vascular risk, incorporating several established risk factors. Principal Components Analysis of the subtests was used to produce common constructs: an index for Memory and another for Executive Function/Processing Speed. Univariate General Linear models were used to relate Vascular Age to performance on Executive Function/Processing Speed and Memory subtests of the BMET, adjusting for Age, Premorbid Intelligence and Ethnicity. Results: Adverse vascular risk was associated with poorer performance on both the Memory and Executive Function/Processing Speed indices, adjusted for Age, Premorbid Intelligence and Ethnicity (p=0.011 and p<0.001, respectively). Conclusions: Performance on the BMET reflects the subclinical effects of vascular risk on cognition, in age-related cognitive decline. Vascular risk is associated with decline in both Executive Function/Processing Speed and Memory groups of subtests. Future studies are needed to explore whether treating vascular risk factors can effectively reduce age-related cognitive decline.

Keywords: age-related cognitive decline, vascular cognitive impairment, subclinical cerebrovascular disease, cognitive aging

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Authors: Ramachandra Pradhan, Sandeep Singh Rama, Sabyasachi Mishra

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Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus L.) in its tender form is consumed as a vegetable and popular for its flavour, colour and meat like texture. In South Asian countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Indonesia the market value for tender jackfruit is very high. However, due to lack of technology the marketing and transportation of the fruit is a challenge. The processing activities like washing, sorting, peeling and cutting enhances oxidative stress in fresh cut jackfruit. It is also having the ill effects on quality of fresh cut tender jackfruit by an increase in microbial contaminations, excessive tissue softening, and depletion of phytochemicals and browning. Hence, this study was conducted as a solution to the above problem. Fresh cut tender Jackfruit slices were processed by using the independent parameters such as concentration of CaCl2 (2-5%), concentration of citric acid (1-2.5%) and treatment time (4-10 min.) and the depended variables were Browning index (BI), colour change (ΔE), Firmness (F) and Overall all acceptability (OAA) after the treatment. From the response variables the best combination of independent variables was resulted as 3% concentration of CaCl2 and 2% concentration of citric acid for 6 minutes. At these optimised processing treatments, the browning can be prevented for fresh cut tender jackfruit. This technology can be used by the researcher, scientists, industries, etc. for further processing of tender jackfruit.

Keywords: tender jackfruit, browning index, firmness, texture

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Authors: Nupur A. D., Miah M. S., Moniruzzaman S. K.

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Autism is a neurobiological disorder that affects physical, social, and language skills of a person. A child with autism feels difficulty for processing, integrating, and responding to sensory stimuli. Current estimates have shown that 45% to 96 % of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder demonstrate sensory difficulties. As autism is a worldwide burning issue, it has become a highly prioritized and important service provision in Bangladesh. The sensory deficit does not only hamper the normal development of a child, it also hampers the learning process and functional independency. The purpose of this study was to find out the prevalence of sensory dysfunction among children with autism and recognize common patterns of sensory dysfunction. A cross-sectional study design was chosen to carry out this research work. This study enrolled eighty children with autism and their parents by using the systematic sampling method. In this study, data were collected through the Short Sensory Profile (SSP) assessment tool, which consists of 38 items in the questionnaire, and qualified graduate Occupational Therapists were directly involved in interviewing parents as well as observing child responses to sensory related activities of the children with autism from four selected autism centers in Dhaka, Bangladesh. All item analyses were conducted to identify items yielding or resulting in the highest reported sensory processing dysfunction among those children through using SSP and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 for data analysis. This study revealed that almost 78.25% of children with autism had significant sensory processing dysfunction based on their sensory response to relevant activities. Under-responsive sensory seeking and auditory filtering were the least common problems among them. On the other hand, most of them (95%) represented that they had definite to probable differences in sensory processing, including under-response or sensory seeking, auditory filtering, and tactile sensitivity. Besides, the result also shows that the definite difference in sensory processing among 64 children was within 100%; it means those children with autism suffered from sensory difficulties, and thus it drew a great impact on the children’s Daily Living Activities (ADLs) as well as social interaction with others. Almost 95% of children with autism require intervention to overcome or normalize the problem. The result gives insight regarding types of sensory processing dysfunction to consider during diagnosis and ascertaining the treatment. So, early sensory problem identification is very important and thus will help to provide appropriate sensory input to minimize the maladaptive behavior and enhance to reach the normal range of adaptive behavior.

Keywords: autism, sensory processing difficulties, sensory profile, occupational therapy

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Authors: Iyiola O. Otunniyi, Oluwayimika O. Oluokun

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The two-step leaching process of PCB dust will produce a first leaching stream containing assorted metals that still requires more demanding multistage processing afterward to recover base metals and precious metals. In this work, three-step selective complexations produce a clean gold solution from printed circuit board dust. After optimizing for temperature and concentrations, the first step under oxidative ammonia leaching recovered no gold, 90 % Cu and 50 % Zn. Second step acid leaching recovered no gold, 89 % Fe, 48 % Zn, 94 % Ni. The recoveries generally increased with reducing dust particle sizes, except for zinc under oxidative ammonia, and it was noted that its various alloy forms in PCB could be responsible for this. At the third leaching step using acidified thiourea with 0.1 M H₂O₂ at 25 OC, gold recovery was 99 %. The leaching rate was shown to be chemically controlled, implying that reagent dosage control will compensate for feed assay shifts in an operation design. Copper, zinc and nickel will be easily recoverable from leach solutions of the first two steps in this leaching scheme. The third step produced a clean gold solution for easy processing downstream.

Keywords: gold thiourea complexation, printed circuit board, step leaching, selective recovery

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Authors: Lokendra Kumar Devangan, Ajay Mishra

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This paper describes the implementation of a large-scale SAS/OR model with significant pre-processing, scenario analysis, and post-processing work done using SAS. A large cement manufacturer with ten geographically distributed manufacturing plants for two variants of cement, around 400 warehouses serving as transshipment points, and several thousand distributor locations generating demand needed to optimize this multi-echelon, multi-modal transport supply chain separately for planning and allocation purposes. For monthly planning as well as daily allocation, the demand is deterministic. Rail and road networks connect any two points in this supply chain, creating tens of thousands of such connections. Constraints include the plant’s production capacity, transportation capacity, and rail wagon batch size constraints. Each demand point has a minimum and maximum for shipments received. Price varies at demand locations due to local factors. A large mixed integer programming model built using proc OPTMODEL decides production at plants, demand fulfilled at each location, and the shipment route to demand locations to maximize the profit contribution. Using base SAS, we did significant pre-processing of data and created inputs for the optimization. Using outputs generated by OPTMODEL and other processing completed using base SAS, we generated several reports that went into their enterprise system and created tables for easy consumption of the optimization results by operations.

Keywords: production planning, mixed integer optimization, network model, network optimization

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Authors: Mohamed Nasraoui

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Spatial ore distribution, ore heterogeneity and their links with geological processes involved in Niobium concentration are all factors for consideration when bridging field observations to extraction scheme. Indeed, mineralogy changes of Nb-hosting phases, their textural relationships with hydrothermal or secondary minerals, play a key control over mineral processing. This study based both on filed work and ore characterization presents data from several Nb-deposits related to carbonatite complexes. The results obtained by a wide range of analytical techniques, including, XRD, XRF, ICP-MS, SEM, Microprobe, Spectro-CL, FTIR-DTA and Mössbauer spectroscopy, demonstrate how geometallurgical assessment, at all stage of mine development, can greatly assist in the design of a suitable extraction flowsheet and data reconciliation.

Keywords: carbonatites, Nb-geometallurgy, Nb-mineralogy, mineral processing.

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Authors: Jagruti Barot

Abstract:

The textile industry plays a major role in the economy of India and on the other side of the coin it is the major source for water pollution. As azo dyes is the largest dye class they are extensively used in many fields such as textile industry, leather tanning industry, paper production, food, colour photography, pharmaceuticals and medicine, cosmetic, hair colourings, wood staining, agricultural, biological and chemical research etc. In addition to these, they can have acute and/or chronic effects on organisms depending on their concentration and length of exposure when they discharged as effluent in the environment. The aim of this study was to assess the genotoxic and histotoxic potentials of environmentally relevant concentrations of RR 120 on Catla catla, important edible freshwater fingerlings. For this, healthy Catla catla fingerlings were procured from the Government Fish Farm and acclimatized in 100 L capacity and continuously aerated glass aquarium in laboratory for 15 days. According to APHA some physic-chemical parameters were measured and maintained such as temperature, pH, dissolve oxygen, alkalinity, total hardness. Water along with excreta had been changed every 24 hrs. All fingerlings were fed artificial food palates once a day @ body weight. After 15 days fingerlings were grouped in 5 (10 in each) and exposed to various concentrations of RR 120 (Control, 10, 20, 30 and 40 mg/L) and samples (peripheral blood and gills, kidney) were collected and analyzed at 96 hrs. of interval. All results were compared with the control. Micronuclei (MN), nuclear buds (NB), fragmented-apoptotic (FA) and bi-nucleated (BN) cells in blood cells and in tissues (gills and kidney cells) were observed. Prominent histopathological alterations were noticed in gills such as aneurism, hyperplasia, degenerated central axis, lifting of gill epithelium, curved secondary gill lamellae etc. Similarly kidney showed some detrimental changes like shrunken glomeruli with increased periglomerular space, degenerated renal tubules etc. Both haematological and histopathological changes clearly reveal the toxic potential of RR 120. This work concludes that water pollution assessment can be done by these two biomarkers which provide baseline to the further chromosomal or molecular work.

Keywords: micronuclei, genotoxicity, RR 120, Catla catla

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Authors: M. I. Oshimagye, V. O. Ayuba, P. A. Annune

Abstract:

The effect of Sublethal Concentrations of Parkia biglobosa pod extract on the growth and survival of Clarias gariepinus juveniles (mean weight 32.73g ± 0.0) were investigated under laboratory conditions for 8 weeks using the static renewal and continuous aeration system. Statistical analysis showed that fish exposed to various concentrations had significantly lower (P<0.05) growth rate than the control groups. The reduction in growth was observed to be directly proportional to increase in concentration. However, at 50 mg/L no significant depression in weight was observed.

Keywords: Clarias gariepinus, Parkia biglobosa, pod, weight

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Authors: Mohsen Solimani Babarsad, Payam Taheri

Abstract:

Numerical results of vertical slot fishways with and without cylinders study are presented. The simulated results and the measured data in the fishways are compared to validate the application of the model. This investigation is made using FLUENT V.6.3, a Computational Fluid Dynamics solver. Advantages of using these types of numerical tools are the possibility of avoiding the St.-Venant equations’ limitations, and turbulence can be modeled by means of different models such as the k-ε model. In general, the present study has demonstrated that the CFD model could be useful for analysis and design of vertical slot fishways with cylinders.

Keywords: slot Fish-way, CFD, k-ε model, St.-Venant equations’

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Authors: Anil H. Dhanawade, Akshay S., Harshal M. Lakesar

Abstract:

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the performance advantages offered by DSP (Digital Signal Processing) cores compared to traditional MCU (Microcontroller Unit) cores in the execution of various functions critical to real-time applications. The focus is on the integration of DSP functionalities, specifically in the context of motor control applications such as Field-Oriented Control (FOC), trigonometric calculations, back-EMF estimation, digital filtering, and high-resolution PWM generation. Through comparative analysis, it is demonstrated that DSP cores significantly enhance processing efficiency, achieving faster execution times for complex mathematical operations essential for precise torque and speed control. The study highlights the capabilities of DSP cores, including single-cycle Multiply-Accumulate (MAC) operations and optimized hardware for trigonometric functions, which collectively reduce latency and improve real-time performance. In contrast, MCU cores, while capable of performing similar tasks, typically exhibit longer execution times due to reliance on software-based solutions and lack of dedicated hardware acceleration. The findings underscore the critical role of DSP cores in applications requiring high-speed processing and low-latency response, making them indispensable in the automotive, industrial, and robotics sectors. This work serves as a reference for future developments in embedded systems, emphasizing the importance of architecture choice in achieving optimal performance in demanding computational tasks.

Keywords: CPU core, DSP, assembly code, motor control

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Authors: E. Irankhah, M. Zarif, E. Mazrooei Rad, K. Ghandehari

Abstract:

Alzheimer's prevalence is on the rise, and the disease comes with problems like cessation of treatment, high cost of treatment, and the lack of early detection methods. The pathology of this disease causes the formation of protein deposits in the brain of patients called plaque amyloid. Generally, the diagnosis of this disease is done by performing tests such as a cerebrospinal fluid, CT scan, MRI, and spinal cord fluid testing, or mental testing tests and eye tracing tests. In this paper, we tried to use the Medial Temporal Atrophy (MTA) method and the Leave One Out (LOO) cycle to extract the statistical properties of the three Fz, Pz, and Cz channels of ERP signals for early diagnosis of this disease. In the process of CT scan images, the accuracy of the results is 81% for the healthy person and 88% for the severe patient. After the process of ERP signaling, the accuracy of the results for a healthy person in the delta band in the Cz channel is 81% and in the alpha band the Pz channel is 90%. In the results obtained from the signal processing, the results of the severe patient in the delta band of the Cz channel were 89% and in the alpha band Pz channel 92%.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, image and signal processing, LOO cycle, medial temporal atrophy

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Authors: S. Raghibdoust, E. Kamari

Abstract:

Research show that reduced functional hearing has a detrimental influence on the ability of an individual to establish proper phonological representations of words, since the phonological representations are claimed to mediate the conceptual processing of written words. Word processing efficiency is expected to decrease with a decrease in functional hearing. In other words, it is predicted that hearing individuals would be more capable of word processing than individuals with hearing loss, as their functional hearing works normally. Studies also demonstrate that the quality of the functional hearing affects reading comprehension via its effect on their word processing skills. In other words, better hearing facilitates the development of phonological knowledge, and can promote enhanced strategies for the recognition of written words, which in turn positively affect higher-order processes underlying reading comprehension. The aims of this study were to investigate and compare the effect of deafness on the participants’ abilities to process written words at the lexical and sentence levels through using two online and one offline reading comprehension tests. The performance of a group of 8 deaf male students (ages 8-12) was compared with that of a control group of normal hearing male students. All the participants had normal IQ and visual status, and came from an average socioeconomic background. None were diagnosed with a particular learning or motor disability. The language spoken in the homes of all participants was Persian. Two tests of word processing were developed and presented to the participants using OpenSesame software, in order to measure the speed and accuracy of their performance at the two perceptual and conceptual levels. In the third offline test of reading comprehension which comprised of semantically plausible and semantically implausible subject relative clauses, the participants had to select the correct answer out of two choices. The data derived from the statistical analysis using SPSS software indicated that hearing and deaf participants had a similar word processing performance both in terms of speed and accuracy of their responses. The results also showed that there was no significant difference between the performance of the deaf and hearing participants in comprehending semantically plausible sentences (p > 0/05). However, a significant difference between the performances of the two groups was observed with respect to their comprehension of semantically implausible sentences (p < 0/05). In sum, the findings revealed that the seriously impoverished sentence reading ability characterizing the profound deaf subjects of the present research, exhibited their reliance on reading strategies that are based on insufficient or deviant structural knowledge, in particular in processing semantically implausible sentences, rather than a failure to efficiently process written words at the lexical level. This conclusion, of course, does not mean to say that deaf individuals may never experience deficits at the word processing level, deficits that impede their understanding of written texts. However, as stated in previous researches, it sounds reasonable to assume that the more deaf individuals get familiar with written words, the better they can recognize them, despite having a profound phonological weakness.

Keywords: deafness, reading comprehension, reading strategy, word processing, subject and object relative sentences

Procedia PDF Downloads 338