Search results for: fig fruit extract

Authors: H. Kadi, A. Moussaoui, A. Medah, N. Benayahia, Nahal Bouderba

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For thousands of years, Punica granatum L. has been used in traditional medicine all over the world and predate the introduction of antibacterial drugs. The aim of the present study was to investigate the antibacterial activity of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Punica granatum L. bark obtained by decoction and maceration. The different extracts of Punica granatum L. (Lythraceae) bark have been tested for antibacterial activity against Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus stearothermophilus) and Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa) by disc diffusion method. The ethanolic macerate extract showed the strong in vitro antibacterial activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa with zone inhibition of 24.4 mm. However, the results tests by disc diffusion method revealed the effectiveness of ethanolic decoctate against Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus stearothermophilus) with diameter zone of inhibition varying with 21.1mm and 23.75 mm respectively.

Keywords: Punica granatum L. bark, antibacterial activity, maceration, decoction

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Authors: Laura Santagostini, Vittoria Guglielmi

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The meaning of the word 'Nature' (literally 'that which is about to be born') has accompanied researchers throughout their study of the environment and has led to the design of technical means to improve the properties of the soil, modifying its structure and/or consistency, thus favouring the emergence and growth of plants. These include soil improvers, i.e. any substance, natural or synthetic, mineral or organic, capable of modifying and improving the chemical, physical, biological and mechanical properties and characteristics of the soil. In particular, GCSCs (Green Composted Soil Conditioners) are soil conditioners produced through a controlled process of transforming selected organic green waste materials, such as clippings from the maintenance of ornamental greenery, crop residues and other plant waste. The use of GCSC in horticulture, fruit growing, industrial cultivation and nursery gardening is an active way to return organic carbon to the soil, thus limiting CO2 emissions and the production of greenhouse gases, and also to limit the environmental impact of peat extraction, which is normally used in these areas of application. With a view to distinguish between GCSC and peats and to assess what further contributions GCSC can provide to the soil and growing plants, we studied the behaviour of the two substrates by chromatographic techniques. After treating the individual soil improvers with different solvents, used individually or by applying a polarity gradient, the extracts obtained were analysed by HPLC and LCMS in order to assess their composition mainly from a qualitative point of view. Data obtained show in GCSC the presence of polyphenolic derivatives attributable to the degradation of plant material and potentially useful for the development and growth of young plants, while commercial peat-based products only sporadically showed the presence of recognisable molecules, confirming the lower complexity of the matrix under analysis. These results allowed us to distinguish the two different types of soil conditioner based on their chromatographic profiles.

Keywords: chromatographic profile, HPLC, polyphenols, soil conditioners

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Authors: Shahrokh Ranjbar-Bahadori, Nima Farhadifar, Leila Mohammadyar

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Plant preparations from thyme and garlic have been shown to be effective acaricides against the poultry red mite, Dermanyssus gallinae. In a layer house with a history of D. gallinae problem, mites were detected in the monitoring traps for the first time and number of them was counted. Then, some rows of layer house was sprayed twice using a concentration of 0.21 mg/cm2 thyme essential oil and 0.07 mg/cm2 garlic juice and a similar row was used as an untreated control group. Red mite traps made of cardboard were used to assess the mite density during days 1 and 7 after treatment and always removed after 24 h. the collected mites were counted and the efficacy against all mite stages (larvae, nymphs and adults) was calculated. Results showed that on day 1 and 7 after the administration of garlic extract efficacy rate was 92.05% and 74.62%, respectively. Moreover, efficacy rate on day 1 and 7 was 89.4% and 95.37% when treatment was done with thyme essential oil. It is concluded that using garlic juice to control of D. gallinae is more effective on short time. But thyme essential oil has a long time effect in compare to garlic preparation.

Keywords: Dermanyssus gallinae, essential oil, garlic, thyme, efficacy

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Authors: Mukesh Singh Boori, Vít Voženílek

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Olomouc is a unique and complex landmark with widespread forestation and land use. This research work was conducted to assess important and complex land use change trajectories in Olomouc region. Multi-temporal satellite data from 1991, 2001 and 2013 were used to extract land use/cover types by object oriented classification method. To achieve the objectives, three different aspects were used: (1) Calculate the quantity of each transition; (2) Allocate location based landscape pattern (3) Compare land use/cover evaluation procedure. Land cover change trajectories shows that 16.69% agriculture, 54.33% forest and 21.98% other areas (settlement, pasture and water-body) were stable in all three decade. Approximately 30% of the study area maintained as a same land cove type from 1991 to 2013. Here broad scale of political and socio-economic factors was also affect the rate and direction of landscape changes. Distance from the settlements was the most important predictor of land cover change trajectories. This showed that most of landscape trajectories were caused by socio-economic activities and mainly led to virtuous change on the ecological environment.

Keywords: remote sensing, land use/cover, change trajectories, image classification

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Authors: Fatma Abdedayem

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We propose an extension to the famous method called Bag of words (BOW) which proved a successful role in the field of image categorization. Practically, this method based on representing image with visual words. In this work, firstly, we extract features from images using Spatial Pyramid Representation (SPR) and two dissimilar color descriptors which are opponent-SIFT and transformed-color-SIFT. Secondly, we fuse color local features by joining the two histograms coming from these descriptors. Thirdly, after collecting of all features, we generate multi-dictionaries coming from n random feature subsets that obtained by dividing all features into n random groups. Then, by using these dictionaries separately each image can be represented by n histograms which are lately concatenated horizontally and form the final histogram, that allows to combine Multiple Dictionaries (MDBoW). In the final step, in order to classify image we have applied Support Vector Machine (SVM) on the generated histograms. Experimentally, we have used two dissimilar image datasets in order to test our proposition: Caltech 256 and PASCAL VOC 2007.

Keywords: bag of words (BOW), color descriptors, multi-dictionaries, MDBoW

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Authors: Muhammed Gündoğan

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Permaculture is an important source of science and experience that can ensure the integration of sustainable architecture with nature. Since the past, many applications have been applied in rural areas for generations with the principle of benefiting from the self-renewal potential of nature. This culture, which has been transferred from generation to generation with architectural disciplines, has the potential to significantly improve the sustainability of the rural area and is an important guide with its nature-based solution proposals. Şanlıurfa has arid and semi-arid climate characteristics. Although it has substantial agricultural potential, water is limited, especially in rural areas. In the region, rainwater harvesting practices such as artificial water canals and cisterns have been used for a long time. However, these solutions remained mostly at the urban scale, and their reflections at the building scale were restricted and inadequate solutions. Impermeable surfaces are required for water harvesting, but water harvesting is not possible as rural buildings are mostly surrounded by cultivated land. Therefore, existing structures are important in terms of applicability. In this context, considering the typology of Traditional Şanlıurfa Houses, the aim of the project was to create a proposal for limited potable and utility water, which is a serious problem, especially for rural buildings in Şanlıurfa. In the project proposal, roof systems that can work integrated with the structural shape of Traditional Şanlıurfa Houses, rainwater collection systems in the inner courtyard, and greywater recycling were provided. While the average precipitation amount was 453.7 kg/m3 between 1929 and 2012, this value was measured as 622.7 kg/m3 in 2012. Greywater was used to produce natural fertilizers and compost for small-scale fruit and vegetable gardens, and it was combined with the principles of Permaculture to make it a lifestyle. As a result, it has been estimated that a total of 976.4 m3 kg of water can be saved, with an annual average of 158.8 m3 of rainwater recycling and 817.6 m3 of greywater recycling within the scope of the project.

Keywords: rural, traditional residential building, permaculture, rainwater harvesting, greywater recycling

Procedia PDF Downloads 131

Authors: G. Blázquez, A. Gálvez-Pérez, M. Calero, I. Iáñez-Rodríguez, M. A. Martín-Lara, A. Pérez

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The production of olive oil is considered as one of the most important agri-food industries. However, some of the by-products generated in the process are potential pollutants and cause environmental problems. Consequently, the management of these by-products is currently considered as a challenge for the olive oil industry. In this context, several technologies have been developed and tested. In this sense, the autohydrolysis of these by-products could be considered as a promising technique. Therefore, this study focused on autohydrolysis treatments of a solid residue from the olive oil industry denominated olive cake. This one comes from the olive pomace extraction with hexane. Firstly, a water washing was carried out to eliminate the water soluble compounds. Then, an experimental design was developed for the autohydrolysis experiments carried out in the hydrothermal pressure reactor. The studied variables were temperature (30, 60 and 90 ºC) and time (30, 60, 90 min). On the other hand, aliquots of liquid obtained fractions were analysed by HPLC to determine the fructose and sucrose contents present in the liquid fraction. Finally, the obtained results of sugars contents and the yields of the different experiments were fitted to a neuro-fuzzy and to a polynomial model.

Keywords: ANFIS, olive cake, polyols, saccharides

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Authors: Dipali Nagaonkar, Mahendra Rai

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Chitosan, a carbohydrate polymer at nanoscale level has gained considerable momentum in drug delivery applications due to its inherent biocompatibility and non-toxicity. However, conventional synthetic strategies for chitosan nanoparticles mainly rely upon physicochemical techniques, which often yield chitosan microparticles. Hence, there is an emergent need for development of controlled synthetic protocols for chitosan nanoparticles within the nanometer range. In this context, we report the green synthesis of size controlled chitosan nanoparticles by using Pongamia pinnata (L.) leaf extract. Nanoparticle tracking analysis confirmed formation of nanoparticles with mean particle size of 85 nm. The stability of chitosan nanoparticles was investigated by zetasizer analysis, which revealed positive surface charged nanoparticles with zeta potential 20.1 mV. The green synthesized chitosan nanoparticles were further explored for encapsulation and controlled release of antioxidant biomolecule, quercetin. The resulting drug loaded chitosan nanoparticles showed drug entrapment efficiency of 93.50% with drug-loading capacity of 42.44%. The cumulative in vitro drug release up to 15 hrs was achieved suggesting towards efficacy of green synthesized chitosan nanoparticles for drug delivery applications.

Keywords: Chitosan nanoparticles, green synthesis, Pongamia pinnata, quercetin

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Authors: Andre Peres Ramos, Franklin Cesar Flores

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Colorization is the process of add colors to a monochromatic image or video. Usually, the process involves to segment the image in regions of interest and then apply colors to each one, for videos, this process is repeated for each frame, which makes it a tedious and time-consuming job. We propose a new assisted method for video colorization; the user only has to colorize one frame, and then the colors are propagated to following frames. The user can intervene at any time to correct eventual errors in color assignment. The method consists of to extract intensity and texture descriptors from the frames and then perform a feature matching to determine the best color for each segment. To reduce computation time and give a better spatial coherence we narrow the area of search and give weights for each feature to emphasize texture descriptors. To give a more natural result, we use an optimization algorithm to make the color propagation. Experimental results in several image sequences, compared to others existing methods, demonstrates that the proposed method perform a better colorization with less time and user interference.

Keywords: colorization, feature matching, texture descriptors, video segmentation

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Authors: Kamal Amarouche, Houda Benbrahim, Ismail Kassou

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Nowadays, e-commerce shopping websites have experienced noticeable growth. These websites have gained consumers’ trust. After purchasing a product, many consumers share comments where opinions are usually embedded about the given product. Research on the automatic management of opinions that gives suggestions to potential consumers and portrays an image of the product to manufactures has been growing recently. After launching the product in the market, the reviews generated around it do not usually contain helpful information or generic opinions about this product (e.g. telephone: great phone...); in the sense that the product is still in the launching phase in the market. Within time, the product becomes old. Therefore, consumers perceive the advantages/ disadvantages about each specific product feature. Therefore, they will generate comments that contain their sentiments about these features. In this paper, we present an unsupervised method to extract different product features hidden in the opinions which influence its purchase, and that combines Time Weighting (TW) which depends on the time opinions were expressed with Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF). We conduct several experiments using two different datasets about cell phones and hotels. The results show the effectiveness of our automatic feature extraction, as well as its domain independent characteristic.

Keywords: opinion mining, product feature extraction, sentiment analysis, SentiWordNet

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Authors: Nahed O. Bawakid, Walied M. Alarif

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With regard to the uniqueness of the red algae of the genus Laurencia as the source of C₁₅-acetogenins, along with the diversity of biological applications; the acetogenin content of the Red Sea L. obtusa was investigated. Fractionation and purification of the CH₂Cl₂/MeOH extract were done by applying several chromatographic techniques, including column and preparative thin-layer chromatography; followed by a series of ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance measurements to give rise of some interesting notes. A new rare chloroallene-based C₁₅ acetogenin, laurentusenin (1) along with a new furan ring containing C₁₅ acetogenin, laurenfuresenin (2), were isolated from the red alga L. obtusa. Comparing 1D and 2D NMR, MS, UV and IR spectral data for the new isolated compounds with the reported bromoallene containing acetogenins spectral data was played the crucial role for characterization of their hemical structures. The apoptosis induced by these two compounds was demonstrated by DNA fragmentation assay and microscopic observation. These observations suggest that (1) and (2) may be involved in regulation of programmed death in the initiation and propagation of inflammatory responses. The isolated metabolite (1) showed unusual substituted allene side chain, while (2) inserted furan ring as a new acetogenin nucleus.

Keywords: cyclic enyne, anti-inflammatory, fatty acids, marine algae, halogenations

Procedia PDF Downloads 151

Authors: Pau Rausell-Koster, Jordi Sanjuan-Belda

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The economic crisis of 2008 had a special impact on cultural consumption in Spain. It fell by almost 30% in a few years, and its share of total family spending decreased from 3.19% in 2007 to 2.38% in 2015. In 2017, unlike other indicators, cultural consumption levels were still far from recovering their pre-crisis values. In times of economic difficulties, the satisfaction of primary subsistence needs takes priority over that of social, cultural and experiential needs, among which cultural consumption would mostly be framed. However, its evolution cannot be attributed exclusively to macroeconomic trends. In parallel to these, technological advances mainly related to the Internet have been disseminated in recent years, which have a very marked impact on the consumption patterns of some cultural sectors. Thus, the aim of this study is to define the causes of the decline in cultural consumption in Spain in recent years, and analyse what type of products, territories and population profiles suffered it especially. From the data analysis of the Family Budget Survey, the study seeks to improve the understanding of the determinants of cultural consumption and their behaviour in the face of macroeconomic trends, as well as identify and extract some policy implications regarding to the upcoming crisis caused by COVID-19.

Keywords: consume patterns, cultural consumption, economic crisis, economic trends

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Authors: Saumya Srivastava, Rina Maiti

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In order to achieve a better performance of vehicle detection in a complex environment, we present an efficient approach for a multi-vehicle detection system using an adaptive sliding window technique. For a given frame, image segmentation is carried out to establish the region of interest. Gradient computation followed by thresholding, denoising, and morphological operations is performed to extract the binary search image. Near-region field and far-region field are defined to generate hypotheses using the adaptive sliding window technique on the resultant binary search image. For each vehicle candidate, features are extracted using a histogram of oriented gradients, and a pre-trained support vector machine is applied for hypothesis verification. Later, the Kalman filter is used for tracking the vanishing point. The experimental results show that the method is robust and effective on various roads and driving scenarios. The algorithm was tested on highways and urban roads in India.

Keywords: gradient, vehicle detection, histograms of oriented gradients, support vector machine

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Authors: Mai Ghazal, Ahmed Hammad

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Cost overruns in construction projects are considered as worldwide challenges since the cost performance is one of the main measures of success along with schedule performance. To overcome this problem, studies were conducted to investigate the cost overruns' factors, also projects' historical data were analyzed to extract new and useful knowledge from it. This research is studying and analyzing the effect of some factors causing cost overruns using the historical data from completed construction projects. Then, using these factors to estimate the probability of cost overrun occurrence and predict its percentage for future projects. First, an intensive literature review was done to study all the factors that cause cost overrun in construction projects, then another review was done for previous researcher papers about mining process in dealing with cost overruns. Second, a proposed data warehouse was structured which can be used by organizations to store their future data in a well-organized way so it can be easily analyzed later. Third twelve quantitative factors which their data are frequently available at construction projects were selected to be the analyzed factors and suggested predictors for the proposed model.

Keywords: construction management, construction projects, cost overrun, cost performance, data mining, data warehousing, knowledge discovery, knowledge management

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Authors: Muna Al-Tarshi

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The distribution and accumulation dynamics of anthropogenic marine debris (AMD) and microplastic particles in mangrove habitats in the region are poorly understood. The abundance, sorting, and diversity aspects of AMD and microplastics were investigated in three types of mangroves creeks ( Natural mangrove, afforested mangrove, and non-planted). Abundance, concentration, and particles form of microplastics have been illustrated in three substrate in mangrove habitats e.g. sediment, water, and aquatic organisms. Density separation method by using highly saturated solution was implemented to extract the plastic particles from the sediment samples. The average size of particles in each transect was done using image software, and the polymer type was determined via FTIR. There was variability in abundance of microplastics and marine debris between the habitats and within the substrates in the habitats.Biomonitoring program was developed to detect the pollution of microplastics in mangrove habitats in Sultanate of Oman. Sediment dwelling species were the best choice. Testing whether the zooplankton (Artemia) eating the microplastics via FlowCam technique have been studied. The zooplanktons (Artemia) were eating the microplastics as mistaken food.

Keywords: microplastics, marine debris, flowcam, FTIR, polymer, artemia

Procedia PDF Downloads 111

Authors: Vishant Gahlaut, A Mercy Latha, Sanjay Kumar Ghosh

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Multi-stage depressed collectors (MDC) are used as an efficiency enhancement technique in traveling wave tubes the high-energy electron beam, after its interaction with the RF signal, gets velocity sorted and collected at various depressed electrodes of the MDC. The ultimate goal is to identify an optimum thermal management scheme (cooling mechanism) that could extract the heat efficiently from the electrodes. Careful thermal analysis, incorporating the cooling mechanism is required to ensure that the maximum temperature does not exceed the safe limits. A simple analytical model for quick prediction of the thermal has been developed. The model has been developed for the worst-case un-modulated DC condition, where all the thermal power is dissipated in the last electrode (typically, fourth electrode in the case of the four-stage depressed collector). It considers the thermal contact resistances at various braze joints accounting for the practical non-uniformities. Analytical results obtained from the model have been validated with simulated and experimental results.

Keywords: multi-stage depressed collector, TWTs, thermal contact resistance, thermal management

Procedia PDF Downloads 224

Authors: Abder-Rahman Ali, Antoine Vacavant, Manuel Grand-Brochier, Adélaïde Albouy-Kissi, Jean-Yves Boire

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In this paper, we present a new segmentation approach for liver lesions in regions of interest within MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). This approach, based on a two-cluster Fuzzy C-Means methodology, considers the parameter variable compactness to handle uncertainty. Fine boundaries are detected by a local recursive merging of ambiguous pixels with a sequential forward floating selection with Zernike moments. The method has been tested on both synthetic and real images. When applied on synthetic images, the proposed approach provides good performance, segmentations obtained are accurate, their shape is consistent with the ground truth, and the extracted information is reliable. The results obtained on MR images confirm such observations. Our approach allows, even for difficult cases of MR images, to extract a segmentation with good performance in terms of accuracy and shape, which implies that the geometry of the tumor is preserved for further clinical activities (such as automatic extraction of pharmaco-kinetics properties, lesion characterization, etc).

Keywords: defuzzification, floating search, fuzzy clustering, Zernike moments

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Authors: Hasan Basri Jumin

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Protoplasts isolated from embryogenic callus of Murraya paniculata (L. Jack.) were cultured in MT (Murashige and Tucker, 1969) basal medium containing 5% sucrose supplemented with kinetin, malt extract (ME) and 0.6 M sorbitol. About 85% of the surviving protoplasts formed a cell wall within 6 d of culture and the first cell division was observed 7 days after isolation. The highest plating effi¬ciency was obtained on MT basal medium containing 5% sucrose supplemented with 0.01 mg 1-1 kinetin 600 mg 1-1 ME, MT basal medium containing 5% sucrose and supplemented with 0.01 mg 1-1 Indole-acetic-acid (IAA) was found to be a medium suitable for the development somatic embryos into heart-shaped somatic embryos. The highest percentage of shoot formation was obtained using 0.1 mg 1-1 Indole-acitic-acid (IAA) 0..1 mg 1-1 gibberellic acid (GA3). In this investigation 40 plants were survived and grew normally in the soil. After two months maitained in the soil plants formed flower and flower developed into fruits on the soil treated with BA.

Keywords: gibberellic-acid, indole-acetic-acid, protoplast, precocious-flowering, somatic-embryo

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Authors: Celia Marilia Martins, Sonia I. V. Guilundo, Iris M. Victorino, Antonio O. Quilambo

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In Mozambique rapid industrialization (mining, aluminium and cement activities) and urbanization processes has led to the incorporation of heavy metals on soil, thus degrading not only the quality of the environment, but also affecting plants, animals and human healthy. Several methods have been used to remediate contaminated soils, but most of them are costly and difficult to get optimum results. Currently, phytoremediation is an effective and affordable technological solution used to extract or remove inactive metals from contaminated soil. Phytoremediation is the use of plants to clean up a contamination from soils, sediments, and water. This technology is environmental friendly and potentially cost effective. The present investigation summarised the potential of edible vegetable to grow under the high level of heavy metals such as lead and zinc. The plants used in these studies include Tomatoes, lettuce and Soya beans. The studies have shown that edible plants can be grown under the high level of heavy metals on the soil. Further investigations are identifying mechanisms used by plants to ensure a safe and sustainable use for remediation of contaminated soils by heavy metals.

Keywords: contaminated soil, edible plants, heavy metals, phytoremediation

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Authors: Firas A. Al Laban, Mohamed Chabi, Sammani Danwawu Abdullahi

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There are a real needs to integrate types of Open Educational Resources (OER) with an intelligent system to extract information and knowledge in the semantic searching level. Those needs raised because most of current learning standard adopted web based learning and the e-learning systems does not always serve all educational goals. Semantic Web systems provide educators, students, and researchers with intelligent queries based on a semantic knowledge management learning system. An ontology-based learning system is an advanced system, where ontology plays the core of the semantic web in a smart learning environment. The objective of this paper is to discuss the potentials of ontologies and mapping different kinds of ontologies; heterogeneous or homogenous to manage and control different types of Open Educational Resources. The important contribution of this research is to approach a methodology uses logical rules and conceptual relations to map between ontologies of different educational resources. We expect from this methodology to establish for an intelligent educational system supporting student tutoring, self and lifelong learning system.

Keywords: knowledge management systems, ontologies, semantic web, open educational resources

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Authors: Tiago do Carmo Nogueira, Cássio Dener Noronha Vinhal, Gélson da Cruz Júnior, Matheus Rudolfo Diedrich Ullmann

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Generating automatic image descriptions through natural language is a challenging task. Image captioning is a task that consistently describes an image by combining computer vision and natural language processing techniques. To accomplish this task, cutting-edge models use encoder-decoder structures. Thus, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are used to extract the characteristics of the images, and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) generate the descriptive sentences of the images. However, cutting-edge approaches still suffer from problems of generating incorrect captions and accumulating errors in the decoders. To solve this problem, we propose a model based on the encoder-decoder structure, introducing a module that generates the weights according to the importance of the word to form the sentence, using the part-of-speech (PoS). Thus, the results demonstrate that our model surpasses state-of-the-art models.

Keywords: gated recurrent units, caption generation, convolutional neural network, part-of-speech

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Authors: Samar M. Alqhtani, Suhuai Luo, Brian Regan

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Data fusion technology can be the best way to extract useful information from multiple sources of data. It has been widely applied in various applications. This paper presents a data fusion approach in multimedia data for event detection in twitter by using Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. The methodology applies a mining algorithm to detect the event. There are two types of data in the fusion. The first is features extracted from text by using the bag-ofwords method which is calculated using the term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF). The second is the visual features extracted by applying scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT). The Dempster - Shafer theory of evidence is applied in order to fuse the information from these two sources. Our experiments have indicated that comparing to the approaches using individual data source, the proposed data fusion approach can increase the prediction accuracy for event detection. The experimental result showed that the proposed method achieved a high accuracy of 0.97, comparing with 0.93 with texts only, and 0.86 with images only.

Keywords: data fusion, Dempster-Shafer theory, data mining, event detection

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Authors: Dib Djalel, Mordjaoui Mourad

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The current trend towards the exploitation of various renewable energy resources has become indispensable, so it is important to improve the efficiency and reliability of the GPV photovoltaic systems. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) plays an important role in photovoltaic power systems because it maximize the power output from a PV system for a given set of conditions. This paper presents a new fuzzy logic control based MPPT algorithm for solar panel. The solar panel is modeled and analyzed in Matlab/Simulink. The Solar panel can produce maximum power at a particular operating point called Maximum Power Point(MPP). To produce maximum power and to get maximum efficiency, the entire photovoltaic panel must operate at this particular point. Maximum power point of PV panel keeps on changing with changing environmental conditions such as solar irradiance and cell temperature. Thus, to extract maximum available power from a PV module, MPPT algorithms are implemented and Perturb and Observe (P&O) MPPT and fuzzy logic control FLC, MPPT are developed and compared. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the fuzzy control technique to produce a more stable power.

Keywords: MPPT, photovoltaic panel, fuzzy logic control, modeling, solar power

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Authors: Allmin Susaiyah, Aki Härmä, Milan Petković

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Automatic generation of insights from data using insight mining systems (IMS) is useful in many applications, such as personal health tracking, patient monitoring, and business process management. Existing IMS face challenges in controlling insight extraction, scaling to large databases, and generalising to unseen domains. In this work, we propose a hybrid approach consisting of rule-based and neural components for generating insights from data while overcoming the aforementioned challenges. Firstly, a rule-based data 2CNL component is used to extract statistically significant insights from data and represent them in a controlled natural language (CNL). Secondly, a BERTSum-based CNL2NL component is used to convert these CNLs into natural language texts. We improve the model using task-specific and domain-specific fine-tuning. Our approach has been evaluated using statistical techniques and standard evaluation metrics. We overcame the aforementioned challenges and observed significant improvement with domain-specific fine-tuning.

Keywords: data mining, insight mining, natural language generation, pre-trained language models

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Authors: Olaniyi Fawole, Umezuruike Opara

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Co-products obtained from pomegranate juice processing contain high levels of polyphenols with potential high added values. From value-addition viewpoint, the aim of this study was to evaluate the stability of polyphenolic concentrations in pomegranate fruit co-products in different solvent extracts and assess the effect on the total antioxidant capacity using the FRAP, DPPH˙ and ABTS˙+ assays during simulated in vitro digestion. Pomegranate juice, marc and peel were extracted in water, 50% ethanol (50%EtOH) and absolute ethanol (100%EtOH) and analysed for total phenolic concentration (TPC), total flavonoids concentration (TFC) and total antioxidant capacity in DPPH˙, ABST˙+ and FRAP assays before and after in vitro digestion. Total phenolic concentration (TPC) and total flavonoid concentration (TFC) were in the order of peel > marc > juice throughout the in vitro digestion irrespective of the extraction solvents used. However, 50% ethanol extracted 1.1 to 12-fold more polyphenols than water and ethanol solvents depending on co-products. TPC and TFC increased significantly in gastric digests. In contrast, after the duodenal, polyphenolic concentrations decreased significantly (p < 0.05) compared to those obtained in gastric digests. Undigested samples and gastric digests showed strong and positive relationships between polyphenols and the antioxidant activities measured in DPPH, ABTS and FRAP assays, with correlation coefficients (r2) ranging between 0.930 – 0.990 whereas, the correlation between polyphenols (TPC and TFC) and radical cation scavenging activity (in ABTS) were moderately positive in duodenal digests. Findings from this study also showed that the concentration of pomegranate polyphenols and antioxidant thereof during in vitro gastro-intestinal digestion may not reflect the pre-digested phenolic concentration. Thus, this study highlights the need to provide biologically relevant information on antioxidants by providing data reflecting their stability and activity after in vitro digestion.

Keywords: by-product, DPPH, polyphenols, value addition

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Authors: Warachate Khobjai, Suriyan Sukati, Khemjira Jarmkom, Pattaranut Eakwaropas, Surachai Techaoei

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The propose of this study was to investigate in vitro thrombolytic activity of Zingiber cassumunar Roxb. and Prasaplai, a Thai herbal formulation of Z. cassumunar Roxb. Herbs were extracted with boiling water and concentrated by lyophilization. To observe their thrombolytic potential, an in vitro clot lysis method was applied where streptokinase and sterile distilled water were used as positive and negative controls, respectively. Crude aqueous extracts from Z. cassumunar Roxb. and Prasaplai formula showed significant thrombolytic activity by clot lysis of 17.90% and 25.21%, respectively, compared to the negative control water (5.16%) while the standard streptokinase revealed 64.78% clot lysis. These findings suggest that Z. cassumunar Roxb. exhibits moderate thrombolytic activity and cloud play an important role in the thrombolytic properties of Prasaplai formula. However, further study should be done to observe in vivo clot dissolving potential and to isolate active component(s) of these extracts.

Keywords: thrombolytic activity, clot lysis, Zingiber cassumunar Roxb., Prasaplai formula, aqueous extract

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Authors: Giulio Mangano, Alberto De Marco, Giovanni Zenezini

Abstract:

The concept of City Logistics (CL) has emerged to improve the impacts of last mile freight distribution in urban areas. In this paper, a System Dynamics (SD) model exploring the dynamics of the diffusion of a ICT platform for CL management across different populations is proposed. For the development of the model two sources have been used. On the one hand, the major diffusion variables and feedback loops are derived from a literature review of existing diffusion models. On the other hand, the parameters are represented by the value propositions delivered by the platform as a response to some of the users’ needs. To extract the most important value propositions the Business Model Canvas approach has been used. Such approach in fact focuses on understanding how a company can create value for her target customers. These variables and parameters are thus translated into a SD diffusion model with three different populations namely municipalities, logistics service providers, and own account carriers. Results show that, the three populations under analysis fully adopt the platform within the simulation time frame, highlighting a strong demand by different stakeholders for CL projects aiming at carrying out more efficient urban logistics operations.

Keywords: city logistics, simulation, system dynamics, business model

Procedia PDF Downloads 267

Authors: Aman Berhe, Camille Guinaudeau, Claude Barras

Abstract:

In order to facilitate information seeking in large collections of multimedia documents with long and progressive content (such as broadcast news or TV series), one can extract the semantic links that exist between semantically coherent parts of documents, i.e., scenes. The links can then create a coherent collection of scenes from which it is easier to perform content analysis, topic extraction, or information retrieval. In this paper, we focus on TV series structuring and propose two approaches for scene linking at different levels of granularity (episode and season): a fuzzy online clustering technique and a graph-based community detection algorithm. When evaluated on the two first seasons of the TV series Game of Thrones, we found that the fuzzy online clustering approach performed better compared to graph-based community detection at the episode level, while graph-based approaches show better performance at the season level.

Keywords: multimedia collection structuring, progressive content, scene linking, fuzzy clustering, community detection

Procedia PDF Downloads 101

Authors: Abolfazl Kamkar

Abstract:

Vegetable oils and fats are recognized as important components of our diet. They provide essential fatty acids, which are precursors of important hormones and control many physiological factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol level, and the reproductive system.Vegetable oils with higher contents of unsaturated fatty acids, especially polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are more susceptible to oxidation.Protective effects of Sature jahortensis(SE) extracts in stabilizing soybean oil at different concentrations (200 and 400 ppm) were tested. Results showed that plant extracts could significantly (P< 0.05) lower the peroxide value and thiobarbituric acid value of oil during storage at 60 oC. The IC50 values for methanol and ethanol extracts were 31.5 ± 0.7 and 37.00 ± 0 µg/ml, respectively. In the β- carotene/linoleic acid system, methanol and ethanol extracts exhibited 87.5 ± 1.41% and 74.0 ±2.25 % inhibition against linoleic acid oxidation. The total phenolic and flavonoid contents of methanol and ethanol extracts were (101.58 ± 0. 26m g/ g) and (96.00 ± 0.027 mg/ g), (44.91 ± 0.14 m g/ g) and (14.30 ± 0.12 mg/ g) expressed in Gallic acid and Quercetin equivalents, respectively.These findings suggest that Satureja extracts may have potential application as natural antioxidants in the edible oil and food industry.

Keywords: satureja hortensis, antioxidant activity, oxidative stability, vegetable oil, extract

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Authors: Ali A. A. Alqarni, Gamal A. Mohamed, Hossam M. Abdallah, Sabrin R. M. Ibrahim

Abstract:

Phytochemical investigation of the methanolic extract of aerial parts of Tagetes minuta L. (Family: Asteraceae) using different chromatographic techniques led to the isolation of five compounds; ecliptal (1), scopoletin (2), P-hydroxy benzoic acid (3), patuletin (4), and patuletin-7-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (5) (Figure 1). Their structures were established based on physical, chemical, and spectral data [Ultraviolet (UV), Proton ¹H, Carbon thirteen ¹³C, and Heteronuclear Multiple Bond Correlation (HMBC) NMR], as well as Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectroscopy (ESIMS) and comparison with literature data. Their cytotoxic activity was assessed towards human liver hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2), human breast cancer (MCF-7), and human colon cancer (HCT116) cancer cell lines using sulphorhodamine B (SRB) assay. It is noteworthy that compound 1 demonstrated a significant cytotoxic potential towards HepG2, MCF7, and HCT116 cells with IC₅₀s ranging from 2.74 to 7.01 μM, compared to doxorubicin (IC₅₀ 0.18, 0.60, and 0.20 μM, respectively), whereas compounds 2, 4, and 5 showed moderate cytotoxic potential with IC50s ranging from 11.71 to 35.64 μM. However, 3 was inactive up to a concentration of 100 μM towards the three tested cancer cell lines.

Keywords: Asteraceae, cytotoxicity, metabolites, Tagetes minuta

Procedia PDF Downloads 163