Search results for: RGB channel extraction

Authors: Jane N. O'Sullivan

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Although it is widely believed that fertility decline has benefitted economic advancement, particularly in East and South-East Asian countries, the causal mechanisms for this stimulus are contested. Since the turn of this century, demographic dividend theory has been increasingly recognised, hypothesising that higher proportions of working-age people can contribute to economic expansion if conditions are met to employ them productively. Population growth rate, as a systemic condition distinct from age composition, has not been similar attention since the 1970s and has lacked methodology for quantitative assessment. This paper explores conceptual and empirical quantification of the burden of expanding physical capital to accommodate a growing population. In proof-of-concept analyses of Australia and the United Kingdom, actual expenditure on gross fixed capital formation was compiled over four decades and apportioned to maintenance/turnover or expansion to accommodate population growth, based on lifespan of capital assets and population growth rate. In both countries, capital expansion was estimated to cost 6.5-7.0% of GDP per 1% population growth rate. This opportunity cost impedes the improvement of per capita capacity needed to realise the potential of the working-age population. Economic modelling of demographic scenarios have to date omitted this channel of influence; the implications of its inclusion are discussed.

Keywords: age dependency, demographic dividend, infrastructure, population growth rate

Procedia PDF Downloads 143

Authors: Abe D. Desta

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This study suggests a deep learning-based method for identifying and following moving objects in surveillance video. The proposed method uses a fast regional convolution neural network (F-RCNN) trained on a substantial dataset of vehicle images to first detect vehicles. A Kalman filter and a data association technique based on a Hungarian algorithm are then used to monitor the observed vehicles throughout time. However, in general, F-RCNN algorithms have been shown to be effective in achieving high detection accuracy and robustness in this research study. For example, in one study The study has shown that the vehicle detection and tracking, the system was able to achieve an accuracy of 97.4%. In this study, the F-RCNN algorithm was compared to other popular object detection algorithms and was found to outperform them in terms of both detection accuracy and speed. The presented system, which has application potential in actual surveillance systems, shows the usefulness of deep learning approaches in vehicle detection and tracking.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, computer vision, deep learning, fast-regional convolutional neural networks, feature extraction, vehicle tracking

Procedia PDF Downloads 126

Authors: Vivek Garg, Brajendra S. Sengar, Gaurav Siddharth, Nisheka Anadkat, Amitesh Kumar, Shailendra Kumar, Shaibal Mukherjee

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CuInGaSe (CIGSe) is the dominant thin film solar cell technology. The band alignment of Buffer/CIGSe interface is one of the most crucial parameters for solar cell performance. In this article, the valence band offset (VBOff) and conduction band offset (CBOff) values of Cu(In0.70Ga0.30)Se/ 1 at.% Ga: Mg0.25Zn0.75O (GMZO) heterojunction, grown by dual ion beam sputtering system (DIBS), are calculated to understand the carrier transport mechanism at the heterojunction for the realization of all sputtered buffer-less solar cells. To determine the valence band offset (VBOff), ∆E_V at GMZO/CIGSe heterojunction interface, the standard method based on core-level photoemission is utilized. The value of ∆E_V can be evaluated by considering common core-level peaks. In our study, the values of (Valence band onset)VBOn, obtained by linear extrapolation method for GMZO and CIGSe films are calculated to be 2.86 and 0.76 eV. In the UPS spectra peak positions of Se 3d is observed in UPS spectra at 54.82 and 54.7 eV for CIGSe film and GMZO/CIGSe interface respectively, while the peak position of Mg 2p is observed at 50.09 and 50.12 eV for GMZO and GMZO/CIGSe interface respectively. The optical band gap of CIGSe and GMZO are obtained from absorption spectra procured from spectroscopic ellipsometry are 1.26 and 3.84 eV respectively. The calculated average values of ∆E_v and ∆E_C are estimated to be 2.37 and 0.21 eV, respectively, at room temperature. The calculated positive conduction band offset termed as a spike at the absorber junction is the required criterion for the high-efficiency solar cells for the efficient charge extraction from the junction. So we can conclude that the above study confirms GMZO thin films grown by the dual ion beam sputtering system are the suitable candidate for the CIGSe thin films based ultra-thin buffer-less solar cells. We investigated the band-offset properties at the GMZO/CIGSe heterojunction to verify the suitability of the GMZO for the realization of the buffer-less solar cells. The calculated average values of ∆E_V and ∆E_C are estimated to be 2.37 and 0.21 eV, respectively, at room temperature. The calculated positive conduction band offset termed as a spike at the absorber junction is the required criterion for the high-efficiency solar cells for the efficient charge extraction from the junction. So we can conclude that the above study confirms GMZO thin films grown by the dual ion beam sputtering system are the suitable candidate for the CIGSe thin films based ultra-thin buffer-less solar cells. Acknowledgment: We are thankful to DIBS, EDX, and XRD facility equipped at Sophisticated Instrument Centre (SIC) at IIT Indore. The authors B.S.S and A.K acknowledge CSIR and V.G acknowledge UGC, India for their fellowships. B.S.S is thankful to DST and IUSSTF for BASE Internship Award. Prof. Shaibal Mukherjee is thankful to DST and IUSSTF for BASE Fellowship and MEITY YFRF award. This work is partially supported by DAE BRNS, DST CERI, and DST-RFBR Project under India-Russia Programme of Cooperation in Science and Technology. We are thankful to Mukul Gupta for SIMS facility equipped at UGC-DAE Indore.

Keywords: CIGSe, DIBS, GMZO, solar cells, UPS

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Authors: Yuanhao Chang, Senbo Xiao, Zhiliang Zhang, Jianying He

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The role of nanoparticles (NPs) in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is being increasingly emphasized. In this study, the motion of NPs and local stress distribution of tapped oil droplet/nanofluid in nanochannels are studied with coarse-grained modeling and molecular dynamic simulations. The results illustrate three motion patterns for NPs: hydrophilic NPs are more likely to adsorb on the channel and stay near the three-phase contact areas, hydrophobic NPs move inside the oil droplet as clusters and more mixed NPs are trapped at the oil-water interface. NPs in each pattern affect the flow of fluid and the interfacial thickness to various degrees. Based on the calculation of atomistic stress, the characteristic that the higher value of stress occurs at the place where NPs aggregate can be obtained. Different occurrence patterns correspond to specific local stress distribution. Significantly, in the three-phase contact area for hydrophilic NPs, the local stress distribution close to the pattern of structural disjoining pressure is observed, which proves the existence of structural disjoining pressure in molecular dynamics simulation for the first time. Our results guide the design and screen of NPs for EOR and provide a basic understanding of nanofluid applications.

Keywords: local stress distribution, nanoparticles, enhanced oil recovery, molecular dynamics simulation, trapped oil droplet, structural disjoining pressure

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Authors: Qiang Zhang, Xiaojian Hu1

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Intersection is the place where vehicles and pedestrians must pass through, turn and evacuate. Obtaining the motion data of vehicles near the intersection is of great significance for transportation research. Since there are usually many targets and there are more conflicts between targets, this makes it difficult to obtain vehicle motion parameters in traffic videos of intersections. According to the characteristics of traffic videos, this paper applies video technology to realize the automated track, count and trajectory extraction of vehicles to collect traffic data by roadside surveillance cameras installed near the intersections. Based on the video recognition method, the vehicles in each lane near the intersection are tracked with extracting trajectory and counted respectively in various degrees of occlusion and visibility. The performances are compared with current recognized CPU-based algorithms of real-time tracking-by-detection. The speed of the presented system is higher than the others and the system has a better real-time performance. The accuracy of direction has reached about 94.99% on average, and the accuracy of classification and statistics has reached about 75.12% on average.

Keywords: tracking and statistics, vehicle, signalized intersection, motion parameter, trajectory

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Authors: Pimploi Tirastittam, Sawanath Treesathon, Amornrath Ongkawat

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Learning Management System (LMS) is the system which uses to manage the learning in order to grouping the content and learning activity between the lecturer and learner including online examination and evaluation. Nowadays, it is the borderless learning era so the learning activities can be accessed from everywhere in the world and also anytime via the information technology and media. The learner can easily access to the knowledge so the different in time and distance is not a constraint for learning anymore. The learning pattern which was used in this research is the integration of the in-class learning and online learning via internet and will be able to monitor the progress by the Learning management system which will create the fast response and accessible learning process via the social media. In order to increase the capability and freedom of the learner, the system can show the current and history of the learning document, video conference and also has the chat room for the learner and lecturer to interact to each other. So the objectives of the “The Design and Applied of Learning Management System via Social Media on Internet: Case Study of Operating System for Business Subject” are to expand the opportunity of learning and to increase the efficiency of learning as well as increase the communication channel between lecturer and student. The data of this research was collect from 30 users of the system which are students who enroll in the subject. And the result of the research is in the “Very Good” which is conformed to the hypothesis.

Keywords: Learning Management System, social media, Operating System, information technology

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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: Giacomo Ciani

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This paper reviews the impact of quantum noise on modern gravitational wave interferometers and explains how squeezed vacuum states are used to push the noise below the standard quantum limit. With the first detection of gravitational waves from a pair of colliding black holes in September 2015 and subsequent detections including that of gravitational waves from a pair of colliding neutron stars, the ground-based interferometric gravitational wave observatories LIGO and VIRGO have opened the era of gravitational-wave and multi-messenger astronomy. Improving the sensitivity of the detectors is of paramount importance to increase the number and quality of the detections, fully exploiting this new information channel about the universe. Although still in the commissioning phase and not at nominal sensitivity, these interferometers are designed to be ultimately limited by a combination of shot noise and quantum radiation pressure noise, which define an envelope known as the standard quantum limit. Despite the name, this limit can be beaten with the use of advanced quantum measurement techniques, with the use of squeezed vacuum states being currently the most mature and promising. Different strategies for implementation of the technology in the large-scale detectors, in both their frequency-independent and frequency-dependent variations, are presented, together with an analysis of the main technological issues and expected sensitivity gain.

Keywords: gravitational waves, interferometers, squeezed vacuum, standard quantum limit

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Authors: Robin Lok-Wang Ma

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The Center/Unit for Industry Engagement and Collaboration, as well as Internship, play a significant role at university. In general, the Center serves as the official interface between the industry and the School or Department to cultivate students’ early exposure to professional experience. The missions of the Center are not limited to provide a communication channel and collaborative platform for the industries and the university but also to assist students to build up their career paths early while still in the university. In recent years, a cooperative education experience (commonly known as a co-op) has been strongly advocated for students to make the school-to-work transition. The nature of the co-op program is not only consistent with the internships/final year design projects, but it is also more industrial-oriented with academic support from faculty at the university. The purpose of this paper is to describe an approach to how cooperative education experience can be integrated into Engineering Curriculum. It provides a mutual understanding and exchange of ideas for the approach between the university and the industry. A suggested format in terms of timeline, duration, selection of candidates, students, and companies’ expectations for the co-op program is described. Also, feedbacks from employers/industries show that a longer-term co-op program is well suited for students compared with a short-term internship. To this end, it provides a new insight into collaboration and/or partnership between the university and the industries to prepare professional work-ready graduates.

Keywords: cooperative education, industry, engagement, collaboration

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Authors: Hamed Alizadeh Dashagholi, Hossein Yousefi-Banaem, Mina Naeimi

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Current study established for EEG signal analysis in patients with language disorder. Language disorder can be defined as meaningful delay in the use or understanding of spoken or written language. The disorder can include the content or meaning of language, its form, or its use. Here we applied Z-score, power spectrum, and coherence methods to discriminate the language disorder data from healthy ones. Power spectrum of each channel in alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and theta frequency bands was measured. In addition, intra hemispheric Z-score obtained by scoring algorithm. Obtained results showed high Z-score and power spectrum in posterior regions. Therefore, we can conclude that peoples with language disorder have high brain activity in frontal region of brain in comparison with healthy peoples. Results showed that high coherence correlates with irregularities in the ERP and is often found during complex task, whereas low coherence is often found in pathological conditions. The results of the Z-score analysis of the brain dynamics showed higher Z-score peak frequency in delta, theta and beta sub bands of Language Disorder patients. In this analysis there were activity signs in both hemispheres and the left-dominant hemisphere was more active than the right.

Keywords: EEG, electroencephalography, coherence methods, language disorder, power spectrum, z-score

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Authors: Daniel Joseph Whittaker

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This paper examines the broad array of historic sites from which Chicago common brick has emerged, and the methods this brick has been utilized within and around a new hybrid structure recently completed-and periodically opened to the public, as a private art, architecture, design, and social activism gallery space. Various technical aspects regarding the structural and aesthetic reuse methods of salvaged brick within the interior and exterior of this new Tadao Ando-designed building in Lincoln Park, Chicago, are explored. This paper expands specifically upon the multiple possible origins of Chicago common brick, as well as the extant brick currently composing the surrounding alley which is integral to demarcating the southern site boundary of the old apartment building now gallery. Themes encompassing Chicago’s archeological and architectural history, local resource extraction, and labor practices permeate this paper’s investigation into urban, social and architectural history and building construction technology advancements through time.

Keywords: masonry construction, history brickmaking, private museums, Chicago Illinois, Tadao Ando

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Authors: Yassa Nacera, Badji Abderrezak, Saidoune Abdelmalek, Houassine Hamza

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Several kinds of faults can occur in a permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) systems: bearing faults, electrically short/open faults, eccentricity faults, and demagnetization faults. Demagnetization fault means that the strengths of permanent magnets (PM) in PMSM decrease, and it causes low output torque, which is undesirable for EVs. The fault is caused by physical damage, high-temperature stress, inverse magnetic field, and aging. Motor current signature analysis (MCSA) is a conventional motor fault detection method based on the extraction of signal features from stator current. a simulation model of the PMSM under partial demagnetization and uniform demagnetization fault was established, and different degrees of demagnetization fault were simulated. The harmonic analyses using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) show that the fault diagnosis method based on the harmonic wave analysis is only suitable for partial demagnetization fault of the PMSM and does not apply to uniform demagnetization fault of the PMSM.

Keywords: permanent magnet, diagnosis, demagnetization, modelling

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Authors: Pawan Kumar Pant, Bhanu Gupta, S. R. Kale, S. V. Veeravalli

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In many countries, buses are the principal means of transport, of which a majority are naturally ventilated with open windows. The design of this ventilation has little scientific basis and to address this problem a study has been undertaken involving both experiments and numerical simulations. The flow pattern inside and around of an open window bus with passengers has been investigated in detail. A full scale three-dimensional numerical simulation has been used for a) a bus with closed windows and b) with open windows. In either simulation, the bus had 58 seated passengers. The bus dimensions used were 2500 mm wide × 2500 mm high (exterior) × 10500 mm long and its speed was set at 40 km/h. In both cases, the flow separates at the top front edge forming a vortex and reattaches close to the mid-length. This attached flow separates once more as it leaves the bus. However, the strength and shape of the vortices at the top front and wake region is different for both cases. The streamline pattern around the bus is also different for the two cases. For the bus with open windows, the dominant airflow inside the bus is from the rear to the front of the bus and air velocity at the face level of the passengers was found to be 1/10th of the free stream velocity. These findings are in good agreement with flow visualization experiments performed in a water channel at 10 m/s, and with smoke/tuft visualizations in a wind tunnel with a free-stream velocity of approximately 40 km/h on a 1:25 scaled Perspex model.

Keywords: air flow, moving bus, open windows, vortex, wind tunnel

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Authors: Anoop T. R., Otman Basir, Robert F. Hess, Ben Thompson

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Strabismus refers to a misalignment of the eyes. Early detection and treatment of strabismus in childhood can prevent the development of permanent vision loss due to abnormal development of visual brain areas. Currently, many children with strabismus remain undiagnosed until school entry because current automated screening methods have limited success in the preschool age range. A method for strabismus detection using eye alignment stability (EAS) is proposed. This method starts with face detection, followed by facial landmark detection, eye region segmentation, eye gaze extraction, and eye alignment stability estimation. Binarization and morphological operations are performed for segmenting the pupil region from the eye. After finding the EAS, its absolute value is used to differentiate the strabismic eye from the non-strabismic eye. If the value of the eye alignment stability is greater than a particular threshold, then the eyes are misaligned, and if its value is less than the threshold, the eyes are aligned. The method was tested on 175 strabismic and non-strabismic images obtained from Kaggle and Google Photos. The strabismic eye is taken as a positive class, and the non-strabismic eye is taken as a negative class. The test produced a true positive rate of 100% and a false positive rate of 7.69%.

Keywords: strabismus, face detection, facial landmarks, eye segmentation, eye gaze, binarization

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Authors: Fuchun Li, Hong Xiao

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We propose a new early warning model for predicting financial stress events for a given future time. In this model, we examine whether credit conditions play an important role as a nonlinear propagator of shocks when predicting the likelihood of occurrence of financial stress events for a given future time. This propagation takes the form of a threshold regression in which a regime change occurs if credit conditions cross a critical threshold. Given the new early warning model for financial stress events, we evaluate the performance of this model and currently available alternatives, such as the model from signal extraction approach, and linear regression model. In-sample forecasting results indicate that the three types of models are useful tools for predicting financial stress events while none of them outperforms others across all criteria considered. The out-of-sample forecasting results suggest that the credit-regime switching model performs better than the two others across all criteria and all forecasting horizons considered.

Keywords: cut-off probability, early warning model, financial crisis, financial stress, regime-switching model, forecasting horizons

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Authors: Hamidreza Bagheri, Alireza Shariati

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There are many difficulties in the purification of raw components and products. However, researchers are seeking better ways for purification. One of the recent methods is extraction using supercritical fluids. In this study, the phase equilibria of benzoic acid-supercritical carbon dioxide system were investigated. Regarding the phase equilibria of this system, the modeling of solid-supercritical fluid behavior was performed using the Perturbed-Chain Statistical Association Fluid Theory (PC-SAFT) and Peng-Robinson equations of state (PR EoS). For this purpose, five PC-SAFT EoS parameters for pure benzoic acid were obtained using its experimental vapor pressure. Benzoic acid has association sites and the behavior of the benzoic acid-supercritical fluid system was well-predicted using both equations of state, while the binary interaction parameter values for PR EoS were negative. Genetic algorithm, which is one of the most accurate global optimization algorithms, was also used to optimize the pure benzoic acid parameters and the binary interaction parameters. The AAD% value for the PC-SAFT EoS, were 0.22 for the carbon dioxide-benzoic acid system.

Keywords: supercritical fluids, solubility, solid, PC-SAFT EoS, genetic algorithm

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Authors: Yousif Mohamed Y. Abdallah, Razan Manofely, Rajab M. Ben Yousef

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X-Ray images are very popular as a first tool for diagnosis. Automating the process of analysis of such images is important in order to help physician procedures. In this practice, teeth segmentation from the radiographic images and feature extraction are essential steps. The main objective of this study was to study correction preprocessing of x-rays images using local adaptive filters in order to evaluate contrast enhancement pattern in different x-rays images such as grey color and to evaluate the usage of new nonlinear approach for contrast enhancement of soft tissues in x-rays images. The data analyzed by using MatLab program to enhance the contrast within the soft tissues, the gray levels in both enhanced and unenhanced images and noise variance. The main techniques of enhancement used in this study were contrast enhancement filtering and deblurring images using the blind deconvolution algorithm. In this paper, prominent constraints are firstly preservation of image's overall look; secondly, preservation of the diagnostic content in the image and thirdly detection of small low contrast details in diagnostic content of the image.

Keywords: enhancement, x-rays, pixel intensity values, MatLab

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Authors: Chandra Mukherjee

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The present paper is a representation of the work done in the field of ECG signal analysis using MATLAB 7.1 Platform. An accurate and simple ECG feature extraction algorithm is presented in this paper and developed algorithm is validated using BIOPAC software. To detect the QRS peak, ECG signal is processed by following mentioned stages- First Derivative, Second Derivative and then squaring of that second derivative. Efficiency of developed algorithm is tested on ECG samples from different database and real time ECG signals acquired using BIOPAC system. Firstly we have lead wise specified threshold value the samples above that value is marked and in the original signal, where these marked samples face change of slope are spotted as R-peak. On the left and right side of the R-peak, faces change of slope identified as Q and S peak, respectively. Now the inbuilt Detection algorithm of BIOPAC software is performed on same output sample and both outputs are compared. ECG baseline modulation correction is done after detecting characteristics points. The efficiency of the algorithm is tested using some validation parameters like Sensitivity, Positive Predictivity and we got satisfied value of these parameters.

Keywords: first derivative, variable threshold, slope reversal, baseline modulation correction

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Authors: Douglas Rossi Ramos

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The current digital conjuncture, called by some authors as 'Internet of Things' (IoT), 'Web 2.0' or even 'Web 3.0', consists of a network that encompasses any communication of objects and entities, such as data, information, technologies, and people. At this juncture, especially characterized by an "object socialization," communication can no longer be represented as a simple informational flow of messages from a sender, crossing a channel or medium, reaching a receiver. The idea of communication must, therefore, be thought of more broadly in which it is possible to analyze the process communicative from interactions between humans and nonhumans. To think about this complexity, a communicative process that encompasses both humans and other beings or entities communicating (objects and things), it is necessary to constitute a new epistemology of communication to rethink concepts and notions commonly attributed to humans such as 'memory.' This research aims to contribute to this epistemological constitution from the discussion about the notion of memory according to the complex ontology of Henri Bergson. Among the results (the notion of memory in Bergson presents itself as a conceptual tool for the analysis of posthumanism and the anthropomorphic conjuncture of the new advent of digital), there was the need to think about an ontological memory, analyzed as a being itself (being itself of memory), as a strategy for understanding the forms of interaction and communication that constitute the new digital conjuncture, in which communicating beings or entities tend to interact with each other. Rethinking the idea of communication beyond the dimension of transmission in informative sequences paves the way for an ecological perspective of the digital dwelling condition.

Keywords: communication, digital, Henri Bergson, memory

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Authors: Masoud Alipanah, Sekineh Akbari, Gholamreza Dashab

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Myostatin genes or factor 8 affecting on growth and making differentiation works (GDF8) as a moderator in the development of skeletal muscle inhibitor. If mutations occurs in the coding region of myostatin, alter its inhibitory role and the muscle growth is increased. In this study, blood samples were collected randomly from 60 Kurdish sheep in northern Khorasan and DNA extraction was performed using a modified salt. A fragment 337 bp from exon 3 myostatin gene and-specific primers by using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) were amplified. In order to detect different forms of an allele at this locus HaeΙΙΙ restriction enzymes and PCR-RFLP analysis were used. Band patterns clarification was performed using agarose gel electrophoresis. The frequency of genotypes mm, Mm, and MM, were respectively detected, 0, 0.15 and 0.85. The allele frequency for alleles m and M, were respectively, 0.07 and 0.93. The statistical analyses indicated that m allele was significantly associated with body weight. The results of this study suggest that the Myostatin gene possibly is a candidate gene that affects growth traits in Kurdish sheep.

Keywords: GDF8 gene, Kurdi Sheep of Northern Khorasan, polymorphism, weight traits

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Authors: Nabia Siddiqui, Tahira Mohsin Ali, Tanveer Abbas, Abid Hasnain

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The present study proposed the use of different onion peel extracts in a South Asian snacks called ‘sew’. The polyphenols extracted from peels were initially analyzed for their antimicrobial potential and bioactive components following three different extraction systems. A relatively higher level of total phenolic content (TP), total flavonoid (TF) and antioxidant activity was observed for EWE (ethanol and water based) extracts followed by EAAE (ethanol and acetic acid) and WE (water extract) sample. Onion extracts showed ability to inhibit gram-positive as well as gram-negative bacteria. The incorporation of onion peel extracts in sew showed a marked increase in bioactive components. Besides bioactivity, sensory attributes, textural characteristics and storage stability of these snacks containing onion peel extract also significantly improved during the shelf study at ambient temperature for up to two months. Thus, these results justify the utilization of these plant polyphenols in fried snacks.

Keywords: onion peels extract, South Asian snacks, antioxidant capacity, bioactivity

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Authors: Y. S. Mohamed, L. A. Ahmed, H. A. Salem, A. M. Agha

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Liver Fibrosis is one of the most serious conditions that affect the Egyptian society. In the present study, the effect of nicorandil was investigated in experimentally-induced liver fibrosis by bile duct ligation in rats. Nicorandil (3mg/kg/day) was given orally 24 h after bile duct ligation for 14 days till the end of the experiment. Nicorandil group showed a significant improvement in liver function tests (ALT and ALP) as well as a significant decrease in oxidative stress biomarkers (TBARS and GSH), area of fibrosis and activity of hepatic stellate cells as indicated by decreased expression of alpha smooth muscle actin.Moreover, nicorandil treatment decreased HSCs proliferation due to its inhibitory effects on protein kinase C(PKC) and Platelet derived growth factor (PDGF) . Oral administration of either glibenclamide (10 mg/kg/day)(a KATP channel blocker) or L-NAME (30 mg/kg/day) (an inhibitor of nitric oxide synthase) blocked the protective effects of nicorandil. However, nicorandil and L-NAME treated group showed more or less results similar to that of untreated bile duct ligated group. In conclusion, nicorandil was effective against the development of bile duct ligated-induced liver fibrosis in rats where activation of the NO pathway plays an important role in the protective effect nicorandil.

Keywords: hepatic stellate cells, nicorandil, nitric oxide donor, liver fibrosis

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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: Dawood Al Chanti, Alice Caplier

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Sparse representations of signals have received a great deal of attention in recent years. In this paper, the interest of using sparse representation as a mean for performing sparse discriminative analysis between spontaneous facial expressions is demonstrated. An automatic facial expressions recognition system is presented. It uses a KSVD-SVM approach which is made of three main stages: A pre-processing and feature extraction stage, which solves the problem of shared subspace distribution based on the random projection theory, to obtain low dimensional discriminative and reconstructive features; A dictionary learning and sparse coding stage, which uses the KSVD model to learn discriminative under or over dictionaries for sparse coding; Finally a classification stage, which uses a SVM classifier for facial expressions recognition. Our main concern is to be able to recognize non-basic affective states and non-acted expressions. Extensive experiments on the JAFFE static acted facial expressions database but also on the DynEmo dynamic spontaneous facial expressions database exhibit very good recognition rates.

Keywords: dictionary learning, random projection, pose and spontaneous facial expression, sparse representation

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Authors: Zyad Elkhadir, Khalid Chougdali, Mohammed Benattou

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Most of the existing intrusion detection systems works on quantitative network traffic data with many irrelevant and redundant features, which makes detection process more time’s consuming and inaccurate. A several feature extraction methods, such as linear discriminant analysis (LDA), have been proposed. However, LDA suffers from the small sample size (SSS) problem which occurs when the number of the training samples is small compared with the samples dimension. Hence, classical LDA cannot be applied directly for high dimensional data such as network traffic data. In this paper, we propose two solutions to solve SSS problem for LDA and apply them to a network IDS. The first method, reduce the original dimension data using principal component analysis (PCA) and then apply LDA. In the second solution, we propose to use the pseudo inverse to avoid singularity of within-class scatter matrix due to SSS problem. After that, the KNN algorithm is used for classification process. We have chosen two known datasets KDDcup99 and NSLKDD for testing the proposed approaches. Results showed that the classification accuracy of (PCA+LDA) method outperforms clearly the pseudo inverse LDA method when we have large training data.

Keywords: LDA, Pseudoinverse, PCA, IDS, NSL-KDD, KDDcup99

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Authors: Toni Maristela C. Estabillo, Michaela V. Matienzo, Mikaela L. Sabangan, Rosette M. Tienzo, Justine L. Bahinting

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This study is about blind watermarking on images with different categories and properties using two algorithms namely, Discrete Wavelet Transform and Patchwork Algorithm. A program is created to perform watermark embedding, extraction and evaluation. The evaluation is based on three watermarking criteria namely: image quality degradation, perceptual transparency and security. Image quality is measured by comparing the original properties with the processed one. Perceptual transparency is measured by a visual inspection on a survey. Security is measured by implementing geometrical and non-geometrical attacks through a pass or fail testing. Values used to measure the following criteria are mostly based on Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). The results are based on statistical methods used to interpret and collect data such as averaging, z Test and survey. The study concluded that the combined DWT and Patchwork algorithms were less efficient and less capable of watermarking than DWT algorithm only.

Keywords: blind watermarking, discrete wavelet transform algorithm, patchwork algorithm, digital watermark

Procedia PDF Downloads 268

Authors: Atanu K Samanta, Asim Ali Khan

Abstract:

Due to the acquisition of huge amounts of brain tumor magnetic resonance images (MRI) in clinics, it is very difficult for radiologists to manually interpret and segment these images within a reasonable span of time. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems can enhance the diagnostic capabilities of radiologists and reduce the time required for accurate diagnosis. An intelligent computer-aided technique for automatic detection of a brain tumor through MRI is presented in this paper. The technique uses the following computational methods; the Level Set for segmentation of a brain tumor from other brain parts, extraction of features from this segmented tumor portion using gray level co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), and the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to classify brain tumor images according to their respective types. The entire work is carried out on 50 images having five types of brain tumor. The overall classification accuracy using this method is found to be 98% which is significantly good.

Keywords: brain tumor, computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) system, gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), tumor segmentation, level set method

Procedia PDF Downloads 512

Authors: Jyh-Ping Chen, Yu-Tin Lai

Abstract:

Wound healing is a complicated process involving overlapping hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and maturation phases. Ideal wound dressings can replace native skin functions in full thickness skin wounds through faster healing rate and also by reducing scar formation. Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) is an U.S. FDA approved biodegradable polymer to be used as ideal wound dressing material. Several in vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of curcumin in decreasing the release of inflammatory cytokines, inhibiting enzymes associated with inflammations, and scavenging free radicals that are the major cause of inflammation during wound healing. Heparin has binding affinities to various growth factors. With the unique and beneficial features offered by those molecules toward the complex process of wound healing, we postulate a composite wound dressing constructed from PLGA, curcumin and heparin would be a good candidate to accelerate scarless wound healing. In this work, we use electrospinning to prepare curcumin-loaded aligned PLGA nanofibrous membranes (PC NFMs). PC NFMs were further subject to oxygen plasma modification and surfaced-grafted with heparin through carbodiimide-mediated covalent bond formation to prepare curcumin-loaded PLGA-g-heparin (PCH) NFMs. The nanofibrous membranes could act as three-dimensional scaffolds to attract fibroblast migration, reduce inflammation, and increase wound-healing related growth factors concentrations at wound sites. From scanning electron microscopy analysis, the nanofibers in each NFM are with diameters ranging from 456 to 479 nm and with alignment angles within  0.5°. The NFMs show high tensile strength and good water absorptivity and provide suitable pore size for nutrients/wastes transport. Exposure of human dermal fibroblasts to the extraction medium of PC or PCH NFM showed significant protective effects against hydrogen peroxide than PLGA NFM. In vitro wound healing assays also showed that the extraction medium of PCH NFM showed significantly better migration ability toward fibroblasts than PC NFM, which is further better than PLGA NFM. The in vivo healing efficiency of the NFMs was further evaluated by a full thickness excisional wound healing diabetic rat model. After 14 days, PCH NFMs exhibits 86% wound closure rate, which is significantly different from other groups (79% for PC and 73% for PLGA NFM). Real-time PCR analysis indicated PC and PCH NFMs down regulated anti-oxidative enzymes like glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and superoxide dismutase (SOD), which are well-known transcription factors involved in cellular inflammatory responses to stimuli. From histology, the wound area treated with PCH NFMs showed more vascular lumen formation from immunohistochemistry of α-smooth muscle actin. The wound site also had more collagen type III (65.8%) expression and less collagen type I (3.5%) expression, indicating scar-less wound healing. From Western blot analysis, the PCH NFM showed good affinity toward growth factors from increased concentration of transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) and fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2) at the wound site to accelerate wound healing. From the results, we suggest PCH NFM as a promising candidate for wound dressing applications.

Keywords: Curcumin, heparin, nanofibrous membrane, poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA), wound dressing

Procedia PDF Downloads 155

Authors: A. Karunasena, P. Bandara, J. A. T. P. Jayasuriya, P. D. Gallage, J. M. S. D. Jayasundara, L. A. P. Y. P. Nuwanjaya

Abstract:

Usage of smart learning concepts has increased rapidly all over the world recently as better teaching and learning methods. Most educational institutes such as universities are experimenting those concepts with their students. Smart learning concepts are especially useful for students to learn better in large classes. In large classes, the lecture method is the most popular method of teaching. In the lecture method, the lecturer presents the content mostly using lecture slides, and the students make their own notes based on the content presented. However, some students may find difficulties with the above method due to various issues such as speed in delivery. The purpose of this research is to assist students in large classes in the following content. The research proposes a solution with four components, namely note-taker, slide matcher, reference finder, and question presenter, which are helpful for the students to obtain a summarized version of the lecture note, easily navigate to the content and find resources, and revise content using questions.

Keywords: automatic summarization, extractive text summarization, speech recognition library, sentence extraction, automatic web search, automatic question generator, sentence scoring, the term weight

Procedia PDF Downloads 148

Authors: Sh. Najari Moghadam, M. Qomi, F. Raofie, J. Khadiv

Abstract:

In this study, a liquid phase microextraction by hollow fiber (HF-LPME) combined with high performance liquid chromatography-UV detector was applied to preconcentrate and determine trace levels of Cyproheptadine in human urine and plasma samples. Cyproheptadine was extracted from 10 mL alkaline aqueous solution (pH: 9.81) into an organic solvent (n-octnol) which was immobilized in the wall pores of a hollow fiber. Then, it was back-extracted into an acidified aqueous solution (pH: 2.59) located inside the lumen of the hollow fiber. This method is simple, efficient and cost-effective. It is based on pH gradient and differences between two aqueous phases. In order to optimize the HF-LPME, some affecting parameters including the pH of donor and acceptor phases, the type of organic solvent, ionic strength, stirring rate, extraction time and temperature were studied and optimized. Under optimal conditions enrichment factor, limit of detection (LOD) and relative standard deviation (RSD(%), n=3) were up to 112, 15 μg.L−1 and 2.7, respectively.

Keywords: biological samples, cyproheptadine, hollow fiber, liquid phase microextraction

Procedia PDF Downloads 287