Search results for: shadow extraction

Authors: Tamer M. El-Messery

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By-products from sunflower oil extraction, such as sunflower cakes, are rich sources of proteins with desirable functional properties for the food industry. However, challenges such as sensory drawbacks and the presence of phenolic compounds have hindered their widespread use. In this study, sunflower protein concentrates were obtained from sunflower cakes using different ant-greening solvents (ascorbic acid (ASC) and N-acetylcysteine (NAC)), and their functional properties were evaluated. The color of extracted proteins ranged from dark green to yellow, where the using of ASC and NAC agents enhanced the color. The protein concentrates exhibited high solubility (>70%) and antioxidant activity, with hydrophobicity influencing emulsifying activity. Emulsions prepared with these proteins showed stability and microencapsulation efficiency. Incorporation of protein concentrates into low-fat whipping cream formulations increased overrun and affected color characteristics. Rheological studies demonstrated pseudoplastic behavior in whipped cream, influenced by shear rates and protein content. Overall, sunflower protein isolates showed promising functional properties, indicating their potential as valuable ingredients in food formulations.

Keywords: functional properties, sunflower protein concentrates, antioxidant capacity, ant-greening agents, low-fat whipping cream

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Authors: Eman A. Gani, Loay E. George, Faisel G. Mohammed, Kamal H. Sager

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Digital retinal images are more appropriate for automatic screening of diabetic retinopathy systems. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of these images are poor quality that hinders further analysis due to many factors (such as patient movement, inadequate or non-uniform illumination, acquisition angle and retinal pigmentation). The retinal images of poor quality need to be enhanced before the extraction of features and abnormalities. So, the segmentation of retinal image is essential for this purpose, the segmentation is employed to smooth and strengthen image by separating the background and damaged areas from the overall image thus resulting in retinal image enhancement and less processing time. In this paper, methods for segmenting colored retinal image are proposed to improve the quality of retinal image diagnosis. The methods generate two segmentation masks; i.e., background segmentation mask for extracting the background area and poor quality mask for removing the noisy areas from the retinal image. The standard retinal image databases DIARETDB0, DIARETDB1, STARE, DRIVE and some images obtained from ophthalmologists have been used to test the validation of the proposed segmentation technique. Experimental results indicate the introduced methods are effective and can lead to high segmentation accuracy.

Keywords: retinal images, fundus images, diabetic retinopathy, background segmentation, damaged areas segmentation

Procedia PDF Downloads 384

Authors: Jun Wang, Chenglei Diao, Emanuele Pagone, Jialuo Ding, Stewart Williams

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As a crucial component in aircraft, landing gear systems are responsible for supporting the plane during parking, taxiing, takeoff, and landing. Given the need for high load-bearing capacity over extended periods, 300M ultra-high strength steel (UHSS) is often the material of choice for crafting these systems due to its exceptional strength, toughness, and fatigue resistance. In the quest for cost-effective and sustainable manufacturing solutions, Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) emerges as a promising alternative for fabricating 300M UHSS landing gears. This is due to its advantages in near-net-shape forming of large components, cost-efficiency, and reduced lead times. Cranfield University has conducted an extensive preliminary study on WAAM 300M UHSS, covering feature deposition, interface analysis, and post-heat treatment. Both Gas Metal Arc (GMA) and Plasma Transferred Arc (PTA)-based WAAM methods were explored, revealing their feasibility for defect-free manufacturing. However, as-deposited 300M features showed lower strength but higher ductility compared to their forged counterparts. Subsequent post-heat treatments were effective in normalising the microstructure and mechanical properties, meeting qualification standards. A 300M UHSS landing gear demonstrator was successfully created using PTA-based WAAM, showcasing the method's precision and cost-effectiveness. The demonstrator, measuring Ф200mm x 700mm, was completed in 16 hours, using 7 kg of material at a deposition rate of 1.3kg/hr. This resulted in a significant reduction in the Buy-to-Fly (BTF) ratio compared to traditional manufacturing methods, further validating WAAM's potential for this application. A "cradle-to-gate" environmental impact assessment, which considers the cumulative effects from raw material extraction to customer shipment, has revealed promising outcomes. Utilising Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) for landing gear components significantly reduces the need for raw material extraction and refinement compared to traditional subtractive methods. This, in turn, lessens the burden on subsequent manufacturing processes, including heat treatment, machining, and transportation. Our estimates indicate that the carbon footprint of the component could be halved when switching from traditional machining to WAAM. Similar reductions are observed in embodied energy consumption and other environmental impact indicators, such as emissions to air, water, and land. Additionally, WAAM offers the unique advantage of part repair by redepositing only the necessary material, a capability not available through conventional methods. Our research shows that WAAM-based repairs can drastically reduce environmental impact, even when accounting for additional transportation for repairs. Consequently, WAAM emerges as a pivotal technology for reducing environmental impact in manufacturing, aiding the industry in its crucial and ambitious journey towards Net Zero. This study paves the way for transformative benefits across the aerospace industry, as we integrate manufacturing into a hybrid solution that offers substantial savings and access to more sustainable technologies for critical component production.

Keywords: WAAM, aircraft landing gear, microstructure, mechanical performance, life cycle assessment

Procedia PDF Downloads 142

Authors: U. S. N. Raju, Kothuri Sai Kiran, Meena G. Kamal, Vinay Nikhil Pabba, Suresh Kanaparthi

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There is huge amount of lecture video data available for public use, and many more lecture videos are being created and uploaded every day. Searching for videos on required topics from this huge database is a challenging task. Therefore, an efficient method for video retrieval is needed. An approach for automated video indexing and video search in large lecture video archives is presented. As the amount of video lecture data is huge, it is very inefficient to do the processing in a centralized computation framework. Hence, Hadoop Framework for distributed computing for Big Video Data is used. First, step in the process is automatic video segmentation and key-frame detection to offer a visual guideline for the video content navigation. In the next step, we extract textual metadata by applying video Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology on key-frames. The OCR and detected slide text line types are adopted for keyword extraction, by which both video- and segment-level keywords are extracted for content-based video browsing and search. The performance of the indexing process can be improved for a large database by using distributed computing on Hadoop framework.

Keywords: video lectures, big video data, video retrieval, hadoop

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Authors: Sudeshna Sengupta

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Women’s work lives weave a complex fabric of myriad work relations and complex structures. Lives, when seen from the lens of work, is a saga of conjugated oppression by intertwined structures that are vertically and horizontally interwoven in a very complex manner. Women interact with multiple institutions through their work. The interactions and interplay of institutions shape their organization of work. They intersperse productive work with reproductive work, unpaid economic activities with unpaid care work, and all kinds of activities with leisure and self-care. The proposed paper intends to understand how women working as home-based workers in the National Capital Region (NCR) of India are organizing their everyday work, and how the organization of work is influenced by the interplay of structures. Situating itself in a multidisciplinary theoretical framework, this paper brings out how the gendering of work is playing out in the political, economic and social domain and shaping the work-life within the family, and in the paid workspace. The paper will use a primary data source, which is qualitative in nature. It will comprise 15 qualitative interviews of women home-based workers from the National Capital Region. The research uses a life history approach. The sampling was purposive using snowballing as a method. The dataset is part of the primary data (qualitative) collected for the ongoing Ph.D. work in Gender Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi. The home-based workers interviewed were in “non-factory” wage relations based on piece rates with flexible working hours. Their workplaces were their own homes with no spatial divide between living spaces and workspaces. Home-based workers were recognized as a group in the domain of labor economics in the 1980s. When menial work was cheaper than machine work, the capital owners preferred to outsource work as home-based work to women. These production spaces are fragmented and the identity of gender is created within labor processes to favor material accumulation. Both the employers and employees acknowledged the material gain of the capital owner when work was subcontracted to women at home. Simultaneously the market reinforced women’s reproductive role by conforming to patriarchal ideology. The contractors played an important role in implementing localized control on workers and also in finding workers for fragmented, gendered production processes. Their presence helped the employers in bringing together multiple forms of oppression that ranged from creating a structure to flout laws by creating shadow employers. It created an intertwined social and economic structure as well as a workspace where the line between productive and reproductive work gets blurred. The state invisibilized itself either by keeping the sector out of the domain of laws or by not implementing its own laws regulating working conditions or social security. It allowed the local hierarchy to function and define localized working conditions. The productive reproductive continuum reveals a labor control that influenced both the productive and reproductive work of women.

Keywords: informal sector, paid work, women workers, labor processes

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Authors: Billel Kenidra, Mohamed Benmohammed

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Data mining technique used in the field of clustering is a subject of active research and assists in biological pattern recognition and extraction of new knowledge from raw data. Clustering means the act of partitioning an unlabeled dataset into groups of similar objects. Each group, called a cluster, consists of objects that are similar between themselves and dissimilar to objects of other groups. Several clustering methods are based on partitional clustering. This category attempts to directly decompose the dataset into a set of disjoint clusters leading to an integer number of clusters that optimizes a given criterion function. The criterion function may emphasize a local or a global structure of the data, and its optimization is an iterative relocation procedure. The K-Means algorithm is one of the most widely used partitional clustering techniques. Since K-Means is extremely sensitive to the initial choice of centers and a poor choice of centers may lead to a local optimum that is quite inferior to the global optimum, we propose a strategy to initiate K-Means centers. The improved K-Means algorithm is compared with the original K-Means, and the results prove how the efficiency has been significantly improved.

Keywords: microarray data mining, biological pattern recognition, partitional clustering, k-means algorithm, centroid initialization

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Authors: Tomas Berhanu Bekele

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Traffic congestion is one of the main problems related to transportation in developed as well as developing countries. Traffic control systems are based on the idea of avoiding traffic instabilities and homogenizing traffic flow in such a way that the risk of accidents is minimized and traffic flow is maximized. Lately, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) has become an important area of research to solve such road traffic-related issues for making smart decisions. It links people, roads and vehicles together using communication technologies to increase safety and mobility. Moreover, accurate prediction of road traffic is important to manage traffic congestion. The aim of this study is to develop an ANN model for the prediction of traffic flow and to compare the ANN model with the linear regression model of traffic flow predictions. Data extraction was carried out in intervals of 15 minutes from the video player. Video of mixed traffic flow was taken and then counted during office work in order to determine the traffic volume. Vehicles were classified into six categories, namely Car, Motorcycle, Minibus, mid-bus, Bus, and Truck vehicles. The average time taken by each vehicle type to travel the trap length was measured by time displayed on a video screen.

Keywords: intelligent transport system (ITS), traffic flow prediction, artificial neural network (ANN), linear regression

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Authors: Chunying Fang, Haifeng Li, Lin Ma, Mancai Zhang

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Speech intelligibility assessment is an important measure to evaluate the functional outcomes of surgical and non-surgical treatment, speech therapy and rehabilitation. The assessment of pathological speech plays an important role in assisting the experts. Pathological speech usually is non-stationary and mutational, in this paper, we describe a multi-granularity combined feature schemes, and which is optimized by hierarchical visual method. First of all, the difference granularity level pathological features are extracted which are BAFS (Basic acoustics feature set), local spectral characteristics MSCC (Mel s-transform cepstrum coefficients) and nonlinear dynamic characteristics based on chaotic analysis. Latterly, radar chart and F-score are proposed to optimize the features by the hierarchical visual fusion. The feature set could be optimized from 526 to 96-dimensions.The experimental results denote that new features by support vector machine (SVM) has the best performance, with a recognition rate of 84.4% on NKI-CCRT corpus. The proposed method is thus approved to be effective and reliable for pathological speech intelligibility evaluation.

Keywords: pathological speech, multi-granularity feature, MSCC (Mel s-transform cepstrum coefficients), F-score, radar chart

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Authors: John O. Akindoyo, M. D. H. Beg, Suriati Binti Ghazali, Nitthiyah Jeyaratnam

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Regeneration of bone due to the many health challenges arising from traumatic effects of bone loss, bone tumours and other bone infections is fast becoming indispensable. Over the period of time, some approaches have been undertaken to mitigate this challenge. This includes but not limited to xenografts, allografts, autografts as well as artificial substitutions like bioceramics, synthetic cements and metals. However, most of these techniques often come along with peculiar limitation and problems such as morbidity, availability, disease transmission, collateral site damage or absolute rejection by the body as the case may be. Hydroxyapatite (HA) is very compatible and suitable for this application. However, most of the common methods for HA synthesis are expensive and environmentally unfriendly. Extraction of HA from bio-wastes have been perceived not only to be cost effective, but also environment-friendly. In this research, HA was produced from bio-waste: namely bovine bones through a combination of hydrothermal chemical processes and ordinary calcination techniques. Structure and property of the HA was carried out through different characterization techniques (such as TGA, FTIR, DSC, XRD and BET). The synthesized HA was found to possess similar properties to stoichiometric HA with highly desirable thermal, degradation, structural and porous properties. This material is unique for its potential minimal cost, environmental friendliness and property controllability. It is also perceived to be suitable for tissue and bone engineering applications.

Keywords: biomaterial, biopolymer, bone, hydroxyapatite

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Authors: A. Moualdia, D. J. Boudana, O. Bouchhida, A. Medjber

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Wind energy has many advantages, it does not pollute and it is an inexhaustible source. However, the cost of this energy is still too high to compete with traditional fossil fuels, especially on sites less windy. The performance of a wind turbine depends on three parameters: the power of wind, the power curve of the turbine and the generator's ability to respond to wind fluctuations. This paper presents a control chain conversion based on a double-fed asynchronous machine and flow-oriented. The supply system comprises of two identical converters, one connected to the rotor and the other one connected to the network via a filter. The architecture of the device is up by three commands are necessary for the operation of the turbine control extraction of maximum power of the wind to control itself (MPPT) control of the rotor side converter controlling the electromagnetic torque and stator reactive power and control of the grid side converter by controlling the DC bus voltage and active power and reactive power exchanged with the network. The proposed control has been validated in both modes of operation of the three-bladed wind 7.5 kW, using Matlab/Simulink. The results of simulation control technology study provide good dynamic performance and static.

Keywords: D.F.I.G, variable wind speed, hypersynchrone, energy quality, hyposynchrone

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Authors: Teodora Vukovic, Christoph Hottiger, Noah Bubenhofer

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The development of VIAN-DH aims at bridging two linguistic approaches: conversation analysis/interactional linguistics (IL), so far a dominantly qualitative field, and computational/corpus linguistics and its quantitative and automated methods. Contemporary IL investigates the systematic organization of conversations and interactions composed of speech, gaze, gestures, and body positioning, among others. These highly integrated multimodal behaviour is analysed based on video data aimed at uncovering so called “multimodal gestalts”, patterns of linguistic and embodied conduct that reoccur in specific sequential positions employed for specific purposes. Multimodal analyses (and other disciplines using videos) are so far dependent on time and resource intensive processes of manual transcription of each component from video materials. Automating these tasks requires advanced programming skills, which is often not in the scope of IL. Moreover, the use of different tools makes the integration and analysis of different formats challenging. Consequently, IL research often deals with relatively small samples of annotated data which are suitable for qualitative analysis but not enough for making generalized empirical claims derived quantitatively. VIAN-DH aims to create a workspace where many annotation layers required for the multimodal analysis of videos can be created, processed, and correlated in one platform. VIAN-DH will provide a graphical interface that operates state-of-the-art tools for automating parts of the data processing. The integration of tools that already exist in computational linguistics and computer vision, facilitates data processing for researchers lacking programming skills, speeds up the overall research process, and enables the processing of large amounts of data. The main features to be introduced are automatic speech recognition for the transcription of language, automatic image recognition for extraction of gestures and other visual cues, as well as grammatical annotation for adding morphological and syntactic information to the verbal content. In the ongoing instance of VIAN-DH, we focus on gesture extraction (pointing gestures, in particular), making use of existing models created for sign language and adapting them for this specific purpose. In order to view and search the data, VIAN-DH will provide a unified format and enable the import of the main existing formats of annotated video data and the export to other formats used in the field, while integrating different data source formats in a way that they can be combined in research. VIAN-DH will adapt querying methods from corpus linguistics to enable parallel search of many annotation levels, combining token-level and chronological search for various types of data. VIAN-DH strives to bring crucial and potentially revolutionary innovation to the field of IL, (that can also extend to other fields using video materials). It will allow the processing of large amounts of data automatically and, the implementation of quantitative analyses, combining it with the qualitative approach. It will facilitate the investigation of correlations between linguistic patterns (lexical or grammatical) with conversational aspects (turn-taking or gestures). Users will be able to automatically transcribe and annotate visual, spoken and grammatical information from videos, and to correlate those different levels and perform queries and analyses.

Keywords: multimodal analysis, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, image recognition, speech recognition

Procedia PDF Downloads 89

Authors: Ashlie Latiolais

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Architecture, as a discipline, is on a trajectory of extension beyond the boundaries of buildings and, more increasingly, is coupled with research that connects to alternative and typically disjointed disciplines. A “both/and” approach and (expanded) definition of architecture, as depicted here, expands the margins that contain the profession. Figuratively, architecture is a series of edges, events, and occurrences that establishes a choreography or stage by which humanity exists. The way in which architecture controls and suggests the movement through these spaces, being within a landscape, city, or building, can be viewed as a datum by which the “dance” of everyday life occurs. This submission views the realm of architecture through the lens of movement and dance as a cross-fertilizer of collaboration, tectonic, and spatial geometry investigations. “Designing on digital programs puts architects at a distance from the spaces they imagine. While this has obvious advantages, it also means that they lose the lived, embodied experience of feeling what is needed in space—meaning that some design ideas that work in theory ultimately fail in practice.” By studying the body in motion through real-time performance, a more holistic understanding of architectural space surfaces and new prospects for theoretical teaching pedagogies emerge. The atypical intersection rethinks how architecture is considered, created, and tested, similar to how “dance artists often do this by thinking through the body, opening pathways and possibilities that might not otherwise be accessible” –this is the essence of this poster submission as explained through unFOLDED, a creative performance work. A new languageismaterialized through unFOLDED, a dynamic occupiable installation by which architecture is investigated through dance, movement, and body analysis. The entry unfolds a collaboration of an architect, dance choreographer, musicians, video artist, and lighting designers to re-create one of the first documented avant-garde performing arts collaborations (Matisse, Satie, Massine, Picasso) from the Ballet Russes in 1917, entitled Parade. Architecturally, this interdisciplinary project orients and suggests motion through structure, tectonic, lightness, darkness, and shadow as it questions the navigation of the dark space (stage) surrounding the installation. Artificial light via theatrical lighting and video graphics brought the blank canvas to life – where the sensitive mix of musicality coordinated with the structure’s movement sequencing was certainly a challenge. The upstage light from the video projections created both flickered contextual imagery and shadowed figures. When the dancers were either upstage or downstage of the structure, both silhouetted figures and revealed bodies are experienced as dancer-controlled installation manipulations occurred throughout the performance. The experimental performance, through structure, prompted moving (dancing) bodies in space, where the architecture served as a key component to the choreography itself. The tectonic of the delicate steel structure allowed for the dancers to interact with the installation, which created a variety of spatial conditions – the contained box of three-dimensional space, to a wall, and various abstracted geometries in between. The development of this research unveils the new role of an Architect as a Choreographer of the built environment.

Keywords: dance, architecture, choreography, installation, architect, choreographer, space

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Authors: Elijah Acquah-Andoh

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The UK has had its fair share of the shale gas revolutionary waves blowing across the global oil and gas industry at present. Although, its exploitation is widely agreed to have been delayed, shale gas was looked upon favorably by the UK Parliament when they recognized it as genuine energy source and granted licenses to industry to search and extract the resource. This, although a significant progress by industry, there yet remains another test the UK fracking resource must pass in order to render shale gas extraction feasible – it must be economically extractible and sustainably so. Developing unconventional resources is much more expensive and risky, and for shale gas wells, producing in commercial volumes is conditional upon drilling horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing, techniques which increase CAPEX. Meanwhile, investment in shale gas development projects is sensitive to gas price and technical and geological risks. Using a Two-Factor Model, the economics of the Bowland shale wells were analyzed and the operational conditions under which fracking is profitable in the UK was characterized. We find that there is a great degree of flexibility about Opex spending; hence Opex does not pose much threat to the fracking industry in the UK. However, we discover Bowland shale gas wells fail to add value at gas price of $8/ Mmbtu. A minimum gas price of $12/Mmbtu at Opex of no more than $2/ Mcf and no more than $14.95M Capex are required to create value within the present petroleum tax regime, in the UK fracking industry.

Keywords: capex, economical, investment, profitability, shale gas development, sustainable

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Authors: Pavel Shcherban, Vlad Golovanov

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Currently, there is an active geological exploration and development of the subsoil shelf of the Kaliningrad region. To carry out a comprehensive and accurate assessment of the volumes and degree of extraction of hydrocarbons from open deposits, it is necessary to establish not only a number of geological and lithological characteristics of the structures under study, but also to determine the oil quality, its viscosity, density, fractional composition as accurately as possible. In terms of considered works, gas chromatography is one of the most capacious methods that allow the rapid formation of a significant amount of initial data. The aspects of the application of the gas chromatography method for determining the chemical characteristics of the hydrocarbons of the Kaliningrad shelf fields are observed in the article, as well as the correlation-regression analysis of these parameters in comparison with the previously obtained chemical characteristics of hydrocarbon deposits located on the land of the region. In the process of research, a number of methods of mathematical statistics and computer processing of large data sets have been applied, which makes it possible to evaluate the identity of the deposits, to specify the amount of reserves and to make a number of assumptions about the genesis of the hydrocarbons under analysis.

Keywords: computer processing of large databases, correlation-regression analysis, hydrocarbon deposits, method of gas chromatography

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Authors: Muhammad Fiaz, Muhammad Saqlain, Bernard M. Y. Cheung, S. M. Saqlan Naqvi, Ghazala Kaukab Raja

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Background: Association of C allele of rs662799 SNP of APOA5 gene with metabolic syndrome (MetS) has been reported in different populations around the world. A case control study was conducted to explore the relationship of rs662799 variants (T/C) with the MetS and the associated risk phenotypes in a population of Pakistani origin. Methods: MetS was defined according to the IDF criteria. Blood samples were collected from the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad, Pakistan for biochemical profiling and DNA extraction. Genotyping of rs662799 was performed using mass ARRAY, iPEX Gold technology. A total of 712 unrelated case and control subjects were genotyped. Data were analyzed using Plink software and SPSS 16.0. Results: The risk allele C of rs662799 showed highly significant association with MetS (OR=1.5, Ρ=0.002). Among risk phenotypes, dyslipidemia, and obesity showed strong association with SNP (OR=1.49, p=0.03; OR =1.46, p=0.01) respectively in models adjusted for age and gender. Conclusion: The rs662799C allele is a significant risk marker for MetS in the local Pakistani population studied. The effect of the SNP is more on dyslipidemia than the other components of the MetS.

Keywords: metabolic syndrome, APOA5, rs662799, dyslipidemia, obesity

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Authors: Fabienne Baraud, Lydia Leleyter, Sandra Poree, Melanie Lemoine

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SEDIBRIC (valorization de SEDIments en BRIQues et tuiles) is a French project that aims to replace a part of natural clays with dredged sediments in the preparation of fired bricks in order to propose an alternative solution for the management of harbor dredged sediments. The feasibility of such re-use is explored from a technical, economic, and environmental point of view. The present study focuses on the potential environmental impact of various chemical elements (Al, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Ni, Mg, Mn, Pb, Ti, and Zn) that are initially present in the dredged sediments. The total content (after acid digestion) and the environmental availability (estimated by single extractions with various extractants) of these elements are determined in the raw sediments and in the obtained fired bricks. The possible influence of some steps of the manufacturing process (sediment pre-treatment, firing) is also explored. The first results show that the pre-treatment step, which uses tap water to desalinate the raw sediment, does not influence the environmental availability of the studied elements. However, the firing process, performed at 900°C, can affect the amount of some elements detected in the bricks, as well as their environmental availability. We note that for Cr, or Ni, the HCl or EDTA availability was increased in the brick (compared to the availability in the raw sediment). For Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn, the HCl and EDTA availability was reduced in the bricks, meaning that these elements were stabilized within the bricks.

Keywords: bricks, chemical extraction, metals, sediment

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Authors: Mohammed A. Arishy, Sultan M. Alharbi, Mohammed A. Hakami, Farid M. Abualsail, Mohammad A. Attafi, Riyadh M. Tobaiqi, Hussain M. Alsalem, Ibraheem M. Attafi

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Lidocaine is the most common local anesthetics used for para cervical block to reduce pain associated with surgical abortion. A 25-year-old pregnant woman who. She died before reaching hospital, and she was undergoing criminal abortion during the first trimester. In post-mortem investigations and autopsy shows no clear finding; therefore, toxic substances must be suspected and searched for routinely toxicology analysis. In this case report, the postmortem concentration of lidocaine was detected blood, brain, liver, kidney, and stomach. For lidocaine identification and quantification, sample was extracted using solid phase extraction and analyzed by GC-MS (Shimadzu, Japan). Initial screening and confirmatory analysis results showed that only lidocaine was detected in all collected samples, and no other toxic substances or alcohol were detected. The concentrations of lidocaine in samples were 19, 17, 14, 7, and 3 ug/m in the brain, blood, kidney, liver, and stomach, respectively. Lidocaine blood concentration (17 ug/ml) was toxic level and may result in death. Among the tissues, brain showed the highest level of lidocaine, followed by the kidney, liver, and stomach.

Keywords: forensic toxicology, GC-MS, lidocaine, postmortem

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Authors: Sadia Basar, Naila Habib, Awais Adnan

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The paper presents the Technique for Image Segmentation Using K-Means Clustering Classification. The presented algorithms were specific, however, missed the neighboring information and required high-speed computerized machines to run the segmentation algorithms. Clustering is the process of partitioning a group of data points into a small number of clusters. The proposed method is content-aware and feature extraction method which is able to run on low-end computerized machines, simple algorithm, required low-quality streaming, efficient and used for security purpose. It has the capability to highlight the boundary and the object. At first, the user enters the data in the representation of the input. Then in the next step, the digital image is converted into groups clusters. Clusters are divided into many regions. The same categories with same features of clusters are assembled within a group and different clusters are placed in other groups. Finally, the clusters are combined with respect to similar features and then represented in the form of segments. The clustered image depicts the clear representation of the digital image in order to highlight the regions and boundaries of the image. At last, the final image is presented in the form of segments. All colors of the image are separated in clusters.

Keywords: clustering, image segmentation, K-means function, local and global minimum, region

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Authors: Olia Kanevskaia

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Standardization has been in the limelight of numerous academic studies. Typically described as ‘any set of technical specifications that either provides or is intended to provide a common design for a product or process’, standards do not only set quality benchmarks for products and services, but also spur competition and innovation, resulting in advantages for manufacturers and consumers. Their contribution to globalization and technology advancement is especially crucial in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and telecommunications sector, which is also characterized by a weaker state-regulation and expert-based rule-making. Most of the standards developed in that area are interoperability standards, which allow technological devices to establish ‘invisible communications’ and to ensure their compatibility and proper functioning. This type of standard supports a large share of our daily activities, ranging from traffic coordination by traffic lights to the connection to Wi-Fi networks, transmission of data via Bluetooth or USB and building the network architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT). A large share of ICT standards is developed in the specialized voluntary platforms, commonly referred to as Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), which gather experts from various industry sectors, private enterprises, governmental agencies and academia. The institutional architecture of these bodies can vary from semi-public bodies, such as European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), to industry-driven consortia, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The past decades witnessed a significant shift of standard setting to those institutions: while operating independently from the states regulation, they offer a rather informal setting, which enables fast-paced standardization and places technical supremacy and flexibility of standards above other considerations. Although technical norms and specifications developed by such nongovernmental platforms are not binding, they appear to create significant regulatory impact. In the United States (US), private voluntary standards can be used by regulators to achieve their policy objectives; in the European Union (EU), compliance with harmonized standards developed by voluntary European Standards Organizations (ESOs) can grant a product a free-movement pass. Moreover, standards can de facto manage the functioning of the market when other regulative alternatives are not available. Hence, by establishing (potentially) mandatory norms, SDOs assume regulatory functions commonly exercised by States and shape their own legal order. The purpose of this paper is threefold: First, it attempts to shed some light on SDOs’ institutional architecture, focusing on private, industry-driven platforms and comparing their regulatory frameworks with those of formal organizations. Drawing upon the relevant scholarship, the paper then discusses the extent to which the formulation of technological standards within SDOs constitutes a private legal order, operating in the shadow of governmental regulation. Ultimately, this contribution seeks to advise whether a state-intervention in industry-driven standard setting is desirable, and whether the increasing regulatory importance of SDOs should be addressed in legislation on standardization.

Keywords: private order, standardization, standard-setting organizations, transnational law

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Authors: Lukas Stiburek, Jana Cesnekova, Josef Houstek, Jiri Zeman

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Cellular function depends on mitochondrial function and integrity that is therefore maintained by several classes of proteins possessing chaperone and/or proteolytic activities. In this work, we focused on characterization of LACE1 (lactation elevated 1) function in mitochondrial protein homeostasis maintenance. LACE1 is the human homologue of yeast mitochondrial Afg1 ATPase, a member of SEC18-NSF, PAS1, CDC48-VCP, TBP family. Yeast Afg1 was shown to be involved in mitochondrial complex IV biogenesis, and based on its similarity with CDC48 (p97/VCP) it was suggested to facilitate extraction of polytopic membrane proteins. Here we show that LACE1, which is a mitochondrial integral membrane protein, exists as part of three complexes of approx. 140, 400 and 500 kDa and is essential for maintenance of fused mitochondrial reticulum and lamellar cristae morphology. Using affinity purification of LACE1-FLAG expressed in LACE1 knockdown background we show that the protein physically interacts with mitochondrial inner membrane protease YME1L. We further show that human LACE1 exhibits significant pro-apoptotic activity and that the protein is required for normal function of the mitochondrial respiratory chain. Thus, our work establishes LACE1 as a novel factor with the crucial role in mitochondrial homeostasis maintenance.

Keywords: LACE1, mitochondria, apoptosis, protease

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Authors: Rufai Yakubu And Suleiman Kabiru

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Triterpenoids are a diverse class of secondary metabolites with potential antimicrobial properties. In this study, the crude extracts from ethyl acetate was obtained with ultrasonic extraction method. Using a combined chromatographic separation method to isolate squalene (1) stigmasterol (2), stigmasta-5,22-diene-3-ol acetate (3), γ-sitosterol (4), lupeol (5), taraxasterol (6), and betulinic acid (7) from ethyl acetate extracts. Ethyl acetate crude extracts and isolated compounds were both screened for antimicrobial activity and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). For ethyl acetate crude extracts with concentrations of (1.5, 0.75, 0.35, & 0.168 mg/mL) indicated marginal antibacterial activity with a range of 17, 20 and 14 mm zone of inhibition for Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Candida albicans and lower minimum inhibitory concentrations ranges from 18.75 µg/ml to 150 µg/mL. Butulinic acid showed the highest activity against E. coli and C. albicans at 15 mm and 15 mm followed by Lupeol against S. aureus, E. coli and C. albicans at 13, 12, 12 mm. Moreso, no antimicrobial activity for both S. aureus and C. albicans with squalene except for E. coli which showed activity at 11 mm with 300 µg/mL (MIC). Thus, abundant triterpenoids in Deinbollia pinnata will be another centered area for antimicrobial drug discovery.

Keywords: triterpenoid, antimicrobial potentials, deinbollia pinnata, aerial parts

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Authors: Kingsley Izuagbe Ikeke, Abayomi O. Adetuyi

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The study investigated the removal efficiency of crystal violet from aqueous solution using chitosan-charcoal composite as adsorbent. Deproteination was carried out by placing 200g of powdered snail shell in 4% w/v NaOH for 2hours. The sample was then placed in 1% HCl for 24 hours to remove CaCO3. Deacetylation was done by boiling in 50% NaOH for 2hours. 10% Oxalic acid was used to dissolve the chitosan before mixing with charcoal at 55°C to form the composite. The composite was characterized by Fourier Transform Infra-Red and Scanning Electron Microscopy measurements. The efficiency of adsorption was evaluated by varying pH of the solution, contact time, initial concentration and adsorbent dose. Maximum removal of crystal violet by composite and activated charcoal was attained at pH10 while maximum removal of crystal violet by chitosan was achieved at pH 8. The results showed that adsorption of both dyes followed the pseudo-second-order rate equation and fit the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The data showed that composite was best suited for crystal violet removal and also did relatively well in the removal of alizarin red. Thermodynamic parameters such as enthalpy change (ΔHº), free energy change (ΔGº) and entropy change (ΔSº) indicate that adsorption process of Crystal Violet was endothermic, spontaneous and feasible respectively.

Keywords: crystal violet, chitosan−charcoal composite, extraction process, sorption

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Authors: Isil Gazioglu, Abdulselam Ertas

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Aflatoxins (AFs) are secondary toxic metabolites of Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus. AFs can be absorbed through the skin. Potent carcinogens like AFs should be completely absent from cosmetics, this can be achieved by careful quality control of the raw plant materials. Regulatory limits for aflatoxins have been established in many countries, and reliable testing methodology is needed to implement and enforce the regulatory limits. In this study, ten medicinal plant samples (Bundelia tournefortti, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Carduus tenuiflorus, Cardaria draba, Malva neglecta, Malvella sharardiana, Melissa officinalis, Sideritis libanotica, Stakys thirkei, Thymus nummularius) were investigated for aflatoxin (AF) contaminations by employing an HPLC assay for the determination of AFB1, B2, G1 and G2. The samples were extracted with 70% (v/v) methanol in water before further cleaned up with an immunoaffinity column and followed by the detection of AFs by using an electrochemically post-column derivatization with Kobra-Cell and fluorescence detector. The extraction procedure was optimized in order to obtain the best recovery. The method was successfully carried out with all medicinal plant samples. The results revealed that five (50%) of samples were contaminated with AFs. The association between particular samples and the AF contaminated could not be determined due to the low frequency of positive samples.

Keywords: aflatoxin B1, HPLC-FLD, KOBRA-Cell, mycotoxin

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Authors: Terry Teo, Sun Woh Lye, Yufei Li, Zainuddin Zakaria

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Wearable devices such as Electroencephalography (EEG) hold immense potential in the monitoring and assessment of a person’s task engagement. This is especially so in remote or online sites. Research into its use in measuring an individual's cognitive state while performing task activities is therefore expected to increase. Despite the growing number of EEG research into brain functioning activities of a person, key challenges remain in adopting EEG for real-time operations. These include limited portability, long preparation time, high number of channel dimensionality, intrusiveness, as well as level of accuracy in acquiring neurological data. This paper proposes an approach using a 4-6 EEG channels to determine the cognitive states of a subject when undertaking a set of passive and active monitoring tasks of a subject. Air traffic controller (ATC) dynamic-tasks are used as a proxy. The work found that when using the channel reduction and identifier algorithm, good trend adherence of 89.1% can be obtained between a commercially available BCI 14 channel Emotiv EPOC+ EEG headset and that of a carefully selected set of reduced 4-6 channels. The approach can also identify different levels of engagement activities ranging from general monitoring ad hoc and repeated active monitoring activities involving information search, extraction, and memory activities.

Keywords: assessment, neurophysiology, monitoring, EEG

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Authors: Aidaoui Ahleme, Hasseine Abdelmalek

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Acetic acid is one of the simplest and most widely used carboxylic acids having many important chemical and industrial applications. Total worldwide production of acetic acid is about 6.5 million tonnes per year. A great deal of efforts has been made in developing feasible and economic method for recovery of carboxylic acids. Among them, Liquid-liquid extraction using aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) has been demonstrated to be a highly efficient separation technique. The study of efficiently separating and recovering Acetic acid from aqueous solutions is an important significance on industry and environmentally sustainable development. Many research groups in different countries are working in this field and some methods are proposed in the literature. In this work, effect of sodium chloride with different content (5%, 10% and 20%) on the liquid-liquid equilibrium data of (water+ acetic acid+ DCM) system is investigated. The addition of the salt in an aqueous solution introduces ionic forces which affect liquid-liquid equilibrium and which influence directly the distribution coefficient of the solute. From the experimental results, it can be concluded that when the percentage of salt increases in the aqueous solution, the equilibrium between phases is modified in favor of the extracted phase.

Keywords: acetic acid recovery, aqueous solution, salting-effect, sodium chloride

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Authors: Muammer Kaya

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The main purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive review of various physical and chemical processes for electronic waste (e-waste) recycling, their advantages and shortfalls towards achieving a cleaner process of waste utilization, with especial attention towards extraction of metallic values. Current status and future perspectives of waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) recycling are described. E-waste characterization, dismantling/ disassembly methods, liberation and classification processes, composition determination techniques are covered. Manual selective dismantling and metal-nonmetal liberation at – 150 µm at two step crushing are found to be the best. After size reduction, mainly physical separation/concentration processes employing gravity, electrostatic, magnetic separators, froth floatation etc., which are commonly used in mineral processing, have been critically reviewed here for separation of metals and non-metals, along with useful utilizations of the non-metallic materials. The recovery of metals from e-waste material after physical separation through pyrometallurgical, hydrometallurgical or biohydrometallurgical routes is also discussed along with purification and refining and some suitable flowsheets are also given. It seems that hydrometallurgical route will be a key player in the base and precious metals recoveries from e-waste. E-waste recycling will be a very important sector in the near future from economic and environmental perspectives.

Keywords: e-waste, WEEE, recycling, metal recovery, hydrometallurgy, pirometallurgy, biometallurgy

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Authors: Lavanya Srinivasan

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Biometric identification is to identify unique features in a person like fingerprints, iris, ear, and voice recognition that need the subject's permission and physical contact. Gait biometric is used to identify the unique gait of the person by extracting moving features. The main advantage of gait biometric to identify the gait of a person at a distance, without any physical contact. In this work, the gait biometric is used for person re-identification. The person walking naturally compared with the same person walking with bag, coat, and case recorded using longwave infrared, short wave infrared, medium wave infrared, and visible cameras. The videos are recorded in rural and in urban environments. The pre-processing technique includes human identified using YOLO, background subtraction, silhouettes extraction, and synthesis Gait Entropy Image by averaging the silhouettes. The moving features are extracted from the Gait Entropy Energy Image. The extracted features are dimensionality reduced by the principal component analysis and recognised using different classifiers. The comparative results with the different classifier show that linear discriminant analysis outperforms other classifiers with 95.8% for visible in the rural dataset and 94.8% for longwave infrared in the urban dataset.

Keywords: biometric, gait, silhouettes, YOLO

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Authors: Hala Zaghloul, Taymoor Nazmy

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One of the great challenges of the 21st century is to build a robot that can perceive and act within its environment and communicate with people, while also exhibiting the cognitive capabilities that lead to performance like that of people. The Pulse Coupled Neural Network, PCNN, is a relative new ANN model that derived from a neural mammal model with a great potential in the area of image processing as well as target recognition, feature extraction, speech recognition, combinatorial optimization, compressed encoding. PCNN has unique feature among other types of neural network, which make it a candid to be an important approach for perceiving in cognitive systems. This work show and emphasis on the potentials of PCNN to perform different tasks related to image processing. The main drawback or the obstacle that prevent the direct implementation of such technique, is the need to find away to control the PCNN parameters toward perform a specific task. This paper will evaluate the performance of PCNN standard model for processing images with different properties, and select the important parameters that give a significant result, also, the approaches towards find a way for the adaptation of the PCNN parameters to perform a specific task.

Keywords: cognitive system, image processing, segmentation, PCNN kernels

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Authors: Yu Hung Chiang, Hei Chia Wang

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In the academic area, it is important for research to find proper research domain. Many researchers may refer to conference issues to find their interesting or new topics. Furthermore, conferences issues can help researchers realize current research trends in their field and learn about cutting-edge developments in their specialty. However, online published conference information may widely be distributed; it is not easy to be concluded. Many researchers use search engine of journals or conference issues to filter information in order to get what they want. However, this search engine has its limitation. There will still be some issues should be considered; i.e. researchers cannot find the associated topics which may be useful information for them. Hence, use Knowledge Management (KM) could be a way to resolve these issues. In KM, ontology is widely adopted; but most existed ontology construction methods do not consider social information between target users. To effective in academic KM, this study proposes a method of constructing research Topic Maps using Open Directory Project (ODP) and Social Information Processing (SIP). Through catching of social information in conference website: i.e. the information of co-authorship or collaborator, research topics can be associated among related researchers. Finally, the experiments show Topic Maps successfully help researchers to find the information they need more easily and quickly as well as construct associations between research topics.

Keywords: knowledge management, topic map, social information processing, ontology extraction

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Authors: Hesam Sedaghat Nejad, Navid Hosseini, Arash Nikvar Hassani

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Determination of the optimum block size with high profitability is one of the significant parameters in designation of the building stone mines. The aim of this study was to determine the optimum dimensions of building stone blocks in Delichai travertine mine of Damavand in Tehran province through combining the effective parameters proven in determination of the optimum dimensions in building stones such as the spacing of joints and gaps, extraction tools constraints with the help of modeling by Gemcom software. To this end, following simulation of the topography of the mine, the block model was prepared and then in order to use spacing joints and discontinuities as a limiting factor, the existing joints set was added to the model. Since only one almost horizontal joint set with a slope of 5 degrees was available, this factor was effective only in determining the optimum height of the block, and thus to determine the longitudinal and transverse optimum dimensions of the extracted block, the power of available loader in the mine was considered as the secondary limiting factor. According to the aforementioned factors, the optimal block size in this mine was measured as 3.4×4×7 meter.

Keywords: building stone, optimum block size, Delichay travertine mine, loader power

Procedia PDF Downloads 346