Search results for: Neighbourhood food insecurity index

Authors: Amanzhol Kalysh, Didar Kassymova, Aliya Isaeva

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Practices of food sharing as part of the brotherhood and hospitality interpretation have been essential part of the Kazakh ethnic culture since early times. Dialogue in time and space between Kazakhs through differences in food interpretation among the ethnic repatriates may become a link connecting them and platform for stable relations with the host society or serious barrier on the way of their integration in the Kazakhstani society. The article elucidates by the field materials how some aspects of food culture differences among ethnic Kazakhs living abroad (XUAR of China) and ethnic repatriates in Kazakhstan may influence their integration path.

Keywords: Ethnic repatriation, food canon, Kazakh identity, oralman.

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Authors: Michiko Miyamoto

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The market for "functional foods" and "foods with functional claims" that are effective in maintaining and improving health, has expanded year by year due to the entry of major food and beverage manufacturers following the introduction of the specified health food system in 1991 in Japan. To bring health claims related products or services to the market, it is necessary to let consumers to learn about these products or services; an effective marketing through advertising are important. This research proposes a framework for an effective advertisement medium for the food supplement industry by using survey data of 2,500 people.

Keywords: Functional foods, dietary supplements, marketing strategy, structural equation modeling.

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Authors: Nasser Alkorbi, Manuel Hernández-Pérez, Seamus Simpson

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Twitter is a platform service that has quickly risen to prominence as the social media platform most preferred for strategic communication campaigns. It is used by most of the Non-Profit Organizations (NPO) in Saudi Arabia, making it the most popular social media platform in the country. Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) use Twitter to raise awareness of social issues and to communicate with stakeholders. Despite the features Twitter has recently introduced, this paper investigates how NPOs (Foodbanks) in Saudi Arabia use Twitter to raise awareness of food waste, as well as their posting behaviour over a two-year period. By the end of the research, we were able to provide a framework for using Twitter which new or existing NPOs can adopt, as well as helping NPOs (Foodbanks) to recognize and become aware of the impact of Twitter.

Keywords: Awareness, food banks, food waste, Saudi Arabia, social media, Twitter.

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Authors: S. Firouzi, M.R. Alizadeh, S. Minaei

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A study was carried out at the Rice Research Institute of Iran (RRII) to investigate the effect of rollers differential peripheral speed of commercial rubber roll husker and paddy moisture content on the husking index and percentage of broken rice. The experiment was conducted at six levels of rollers differential speed (1.5, 2.2, 2.9, 3.6, 4.3 and 5 m/s) and three levels of paddy moisture content (8-9, 10-11 and 12-13% w.b.). Two common paddy varieties namely, Binam and Khazer, were selected for this study. Results revealed that the effect of rollers differential speed and moisture content significantly (P<0.01) affected percentage of broken brown rice and paddy husking index. Average broken kernel percentage increased from 13 to 14.61% while husking index decreased from 71.64 to 61.81%, as paddy moisture content increased from 8-9 to 12-13%. It was observed that amount of broken rice decreased from 18.83 to 9.97%, when rollers differential speed varied from 1.5 to 5 m/s, while the husking index initially increased and then started to decrease. The mean value of husking index for Khazar variety (64.71%) was significantly lower than that for Binam variety (69.2%). It was concluded that rollers differential speed of 2.9 m/s and moisture content of 8-9% was the most appropriate combination for paddy husking of Binam and Khazar varieties in rubber roll husker.

Keywords: husking index, moisture content, paddy, rubber roll husker.

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Authors: Sejong Oh

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Classification is an important topic in machine learning and bioinformatics. Many datasets have been introduced for classification tasks. A dataset contains multiple features, and the quality of features influences the classification accuracy of the dataset. The power of classification for each feature differs. In this study, we suggest the Classification Influence Index (CII) as an indicator of classification power for each feature. CII enables evaluation of the features in a dataset and improved classification accuracy by transformation of the dataset. By conducting experiments using CII and the k-nearest neighbor classifier to analyze real datasets, we confirmed that the proposed index provided meaningful improvement of the classification accuracy.

Keywords: accuracy, classification, dataset, data preprocessing

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Authors: Jiun-Wei Chen, Chih-Yang Wu, Ming-Feng Hou

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A numerical study on the heat transfer in the thermal barrier coatings and the substrates of a parallel-plate enclosure is carried out. Some of the thermal barrier coatings, such as ceramics, are semitransparent and are of interest for high-temperature applications where radiation effects are significant. The radiative transfer equations and the energy equations are solved by using the discrete ordinates method and the finite difference method. Illustrative results are presented for temperature distributions in the coatings and the opaque walls under various heating conditions. The results show that the temperature distribution is more uniform in the interior portion of each coating away from its boundary for the case with a larger average of varying refractive index and a positive gradient of refractive index enhances radiative transfer to the substrates.

Keywords: Radiative transfer, parallel-plate enclosure, coatings, varying refractive index

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Authors: Raju Bhukya, DVLN Somayajulu

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Pattern matching is one of the fundamental applications in molecular biology. Searching DNA related data is a common activity for molecular biologists. In this paper we explore the applicability of a new pattern matching technique called Index based Forward Backward Multiple Pattern Matching algorithm(IFBMPM), for DNA Sequences. Our approach avoids unnecessary comparisons in the DNA Sequence due to this; the number of comparisons of the proposed algorithm is very less compared to other existing popular methods. The number of comparisons rapidly decreases and execution time decreases accordingly and shows better performance.

Keywords: Comparisons, DNA Sequence, Index.

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Authors: Xiaoyan Dou, Yongkun Li

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In this paper, we consider a food-limited population model with delay and feedback control. By applying the comparison theorem of the differential equation and constructing a suitable Lyapunov functional, sufficient conditions which guarantee the permanence and existence of a unique globally attractive positive almost periodic solution of the system are obtained.

Keywords: Almost periodic solution, food-limited population, feedback control, permanence.

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Authors: Levent Basayigit, Mert Dedeoglu, Fadime Ozogul

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In this study, an application was carried out to determine the Volcanic Soils by using remote sensing.  The study area was located on the Golcuk formation in Isparta-Turkey. The thermal bands of Landsat 7 image were used for processing. The implementation of the climate model that was based on the water index was used in ERDAS Imagine software together with pixel based image classification. Soil Moisture Index (SMI) was modeled by using the surface temperature (Ts) which was obtained from thermal bands and vegetation index (NDVI) derived from Landsat 7. Surface moisture values were grouped and classified by using scoring system. Thematic layers were compared together with the field studies. Consequently, different moisture levels for volcanic soils were indicator for determination and separation. Those thermal wavelengths are preferable bands for separation of volcanic soils using moisture and temperature models.

Keywords: Landsat 7, soil moisture index, temperature models, volcanic soils.

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Authors: E. C. Mattos, V. S. M. G. Daros, R. Dal Col, A. L. Nascimento

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The aim of this study is to present the results of a retrospective survey on the foreign matter found in foods analyzed at the Adolfo Lutz Institute, from July 2001 to July 2015. All the analyses were conducted according to the official methods described on Association of Official Agricultural Chemists (AOAC) for the micro analytical procedures and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the macro analytical procedures. The results showed flours, cereals and derivatives such as baking and pasta products were the types of food where foreign matters were found more frequently followed by condiments and teas. Fragments of stored grains insects, its larvae, nets, excrement, dead mites and rodent excrement were the most foreign matter found in food. Besides, foreign matters that can cause a physical risk to the consumer’s health such as metal, stones, glass, wood were found but rarely. Miscellaneous (shell, sand, dirt and seeds) were also reported. There are a lot of extraneous materials that are considered unavoidable since are something inherent to the product itself, such as insect fragments in grains. In contrast, there are avoidable extraneous materials that are less tolerated because it is preventable with the Good Manufacturing Practice. The conclusion of this work is that although most extraneous materials found in food are considered unavoidable it is necessary to keep the Good Manufacturing Practice throughout the food processing as well as maintaining a constant surveillance of the production process in order to avoid accidents that may lead to occurrence of these extraneous materials in food.

Keywords: Food contamination, extraneous materials, foreign matter, surveillance.

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Authors: Hajar Aman Key Yekani, Yusra Mushtaq, Behnaz Farahani, Hamed Abdi

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This study explores associations between parental restriction and children's appetitive traits, putting to test the hypothesis that parental “restriction” is associated with having a child with stronger food approach tendencies (food enjoyment (FE) and food over responsiveness (FR)). The participants, from 55 nationalities, targeting 1081 parents of 5- to 11-year-old children from 7 private schools in Dubai, UAE, who completed self-reported questionnaires over the 2011-2012 school year. The questionnaire has been a tailored amalgamation of CEBQ and CFQ in order to measure the children’s appetitive traits and parental restriction, respectively. The findings of this quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional analysis confirmed the hypothesis in that “parental restriction” was positively associated with child food responsiveness (r, 0.183), food enjoyment (r, 0.102). To conclude, as far as the figures depict, the parents controlling their children’s food intake would seemingly a reverse impact on their eating behavior in the short term.

Keywords: Parental Restriction, Children Eating Behavior, Approach Tendency, Avoidance Tendency.

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Authors: Warattapop Chainate, Peeraya Thapatsuwan, Pupong Pongcharoen

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The hybridisation of genetic algorithm with heuristics has been shown to be one of an effective way to improve its performance. In this work, genetic algorithm hybridised with four heuristics including a new heuristic called neighbourhood improvement were investigated through the classical travelling salesman problem. The experimental results showed that the proposed heuristic outperformed other heuristics both in terms of quality of the results obtained and the computational time.

Keywords: Genetic Algorithm, Hybridisation, Metaheuristics, Travelling Salesman Problem.

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Authors: Alexander Y. Vaninsky

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This paper presents a method of economic factorial analysis of the CO₂ emissions based on the extension of the Divisia index to interconnected factors. This approach, contrary to the Kaya identity, considers three main factors of the CO₂ emissions: gross domestic product, energy consumption, and population - as equally important, and allows for accounting of all of them simultaneously. The three factors are included into analysis together with their carbon intensities that allows for obtaining a comprehensive picture of the change in the CO₂ emissions. A computer program in R-language that is available for free download serves automation of the calculations. A case study of the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions is used as an example. 

Keywords: CO2 emissions, Economic analysis, Factorial analysis, Divisia index, Interconnected factors.

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Authors: F. O. Omoya

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Food borne illnesses have been reported to be a global health challenge. Annual incidences of food–related diseases involve 76 million cases, of which only 14 million can be traced to known pathogens. Poor hygienic practices have contributed greatly to this. It has been reported that in the year 2000 about 2.1 million people died from diarrheal diseases, hence, there is a need to ensure food safety at all level. This study focused on the sterility examination and inhibitory effect of honey samples on selected gram negative and gram positive food borne pathogen from South West Nigeria. The laboratory examinations revealed the presence of some bacterial and fungal contaminations of honey samples and that inhibitory activity of the honey sample was more pronounced on the gram negative bacteria than the gram positive bacterial isolates. Antibiotic sensitivity test conducted on the different bacterial isolates also showed that honey was able to inhibit the proliferation of the tested bacteria than the employed antibiotics.

Keywords: Food borne illness, gram positive and gram negative bacteria, honey, and inhibitory activity.

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Authors: Deepti Tamrakar, Pritee Khanna

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This manuscript presents, palmprint recognition by combining different texture extraction approaches with high accuracy. The Region of Interest (ROI) is decomposed into different frequencytime sub-bands by wavelet transform up-to two levels and only the approximate image of two levels is selected, which is known as Approximate Image ROI (AIROI). This AIROI has information of principal lines of the palm. The Competitive Index is used as the features of the palmprint, in which six Gabor filters of different orientations convolve with the palmprint image to extract the orientation information from the image. The winner-take-all strategy is used to select dominant orientation for each pixel, which is known as Competitive Index. Further, PCA is applied to select highly uncorrelated Competitive Index features, to reduce the dimensions of the feature vector, and to project the features on Eigen space. The similarity of two palmprints is measured by the Euclidean distance metrics. The algorithm is tested on Hong Kong PolyU palmprint database. Different AIROI of different wavelet filter families are also tested with the Competitive Index and PCA. AIROI of db7 wavelet filter achievs Equal Error Rate (EER) of 0.0152% and Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR) of 99.67% on the palm database of Hong Kong PolyU.

Keywords: DWT, EER, Euclidean Distance, Gabor filter, PCA, ROI.

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Authors: A. Skouloudis, K. Evangelinos, W. Leal-Filho, P. Vouros, I. Nikolaou, T. Tsalis

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In this study a composite index of factors linked to the resilience capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to flooding is proposed and tested. A sample of SMEs located in flood-prone areas (n = 391) was administered a structured questionnaire pertaining to cognitive, managerial and contextual factors that affect the ability to prepare, withstand, and recover from flooding events. Through the proposed index, a bottom-up, self-assessment approach is set forth that could assist in standardizing such assessments with an overarching aim of reducing the vulnerability of SMEs to floods. This is achieved by examining critical internal and external parameters affecting SMEs’ resilience capacity which is particularly important taking into account the limited resources these enterprises tend to have at their disposal and that they can generate single points of failure in dense supply chain networks.

Keywords: Floods, SMEs, organizational resilience capacity, index development, Greece.

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Authors: Mohd Zulhilmi Suhaimi, Mohd Salehuddin Mohd Zahari

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Common acceptable cuisine usually discussed in the multicultural/ethnic nation as it represents the process of sharing it among the ethnic groups. The common acceptable cuisine is also considered as a precursor in the process of constructing the national food identity within ethnic groups in the multicultural countries. The adaptation of certain ethnic cuisines through its types of food, methods of cooking, ingredients and eating decorum by ethnic groups is believed creating or enhancing the process of formation on common acceptable cuisines in a multicultural country. Malaysia as the multicultural country without doubt is continuing to experience cross-culturing processes among the ethnic groups including cuisine. This study empirically investigates the adaptation level of Malay, Chinese and Indian chefs on each other ethnic cuisine attributes toward the formation on common acceptable cuisines and national food identity.

Keywords: Common acceptable cuisine, adaptation, ethnic, food, identity.

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Authors: H. Junoh, K. Palanisamy, C. H. Yip, F. L. Pua

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This study investigates the influence of low temperature thermo-chemical pretreatment of organic food waste on performance of COD solubilisation. Both temperature and alkaline agent were reported to have effect on solubilizing any possible biomass including organic food waste. The three independent variables considered in this pretreatment were temperature (50-90oC), pretreatment time (30-120 minutes) and alkaline concentration, sodium hydroxide, NaOH (0.7-15 g/L). The maximal condition obtained were 90oC, 15 g/L NaOH for 2 hours. Solubilisation has potential in enhancing methane production by providing high amount of soluble components at early stage during anaerobic digestion.

Keywords: Food waste, pretreatments, respond surface methodology, ANOVA, anaerobic digestion.

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Authors: Ioannis Manikas

Abstract:

The increased consumer demand for environmentally friendly production and distribution practices and the stricter environmental regulations turned environmental aspects into important criteria in business decision-making. On the other hand, Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) has evolved dramatically during the last decades in theory and practice serving as a reference point for exchanging experiences among all agents involved in programs and projects to fostering policy and strategy development. Global pressures make it more important than ever to gain a better understanding of the contribution that agrifood businesses make to FNS and to examine ways to make them more resilient in an increasingly globalized and uncertain world. This study extends the standard three-dimensional model of sustainability to include two more dimensions: A technological dimension and a policy/political dimension. Apart from the economic, environmental and social dimensions regularly used in sustainability literature, the extended model will accurately represent the measures and policies addressing food and nutrition security.

Keywords: Food and nutrition security, sustainability, food safety, resilience.

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Authors: J. Furuya, S. Kobayashi, S. D. Meyer

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This research examines possible effects of climatic change focusing on global warming and its impacts on world agricultural product markets, by using a world food model developed to consider climate changes. GDP and population for each scenario were constructed by IPCC and climate data for each scenario was reported by the Hadley Center and are used in this research to consider results in different contexts. Production and consumption of primary agriculture crops of the world for each socio-economic scenario are obtained and investigated by using the modified world food model. Simulation results show that crop production in some countries or regions will have different trends depending on the context. These alternative contexts depend on the rate of GDP growth, population, temperature, and rainfall. Results suggest that the development of environment friendly technologies lead to more consumption of food in many developing countries. Relationships among environmental policy, clean energy development, and poverty elimination warrant further investigation.

Keywords: Global warming, SRES scenarios, World food model.

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Authors: Kejun Zhuang

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With the help of coincidence degree theory, sufficient conditions for existence of periodic solutions for a food chain model with functional responses on time scales are established.

Keywords: time scales, food chain model, coincidence degree, periodic solutions.

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Authors: E. Feizi Ashtiani, S. Jamshidi, M.H Niksokhan, A. Feizi Ashtiani

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Waste load allocation (WLA) policies may use multiobjective optimization methods to find the most appropriate and sustainable solutions. These usually intend to simultaneously minimize two criteria, total abatement costs (TC) and environmental violations (EV). If other criteria, such as inequity, need for minimization as well, it requires introducing more binary optimizations through different scenarios. In order to reduce the calculation steps, this study presents value index as an innovative decision making approach. Since the value index contains both the environmental violation and treatment costs, it can be maximized simultaneously with the equity index. It implies that the definition of different scenarios for environmental violations is no longer required. Furthermore, the solution is not necessarily the point with minimized total costs or environmental violations. This idea is testified for Haraz River, in north of Iran. Here, the dissolved oxygen (DO) level of river is simulated by Streeter-Phelps equation in MATLAB software. The WLA is determined for fish farms using multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) in two scenarios. At first, the trade-off curves of TC-EV and TC-Inequity are plotted separately as the conventional approach. In the second, the Value-Equity curve is derived. The comparative results show that the solutions are in a similar range of inequity with lower total costs. This is due to the freedom of environmental violation attained in value index. As a result, the conventional approach can well be replaced by the value index particularly for problems optimizing these objectives. This reduces the process to achieve the best solutions and may find better classification for scenario definition. It is also concluded that decision makers are better to focus on value index and weighting its contents to find the most sustainable alternatives based on their requirements.

Keywords: Waste load allocation (WLA), Value index, Multi objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO), Haraz River, Equity.

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Authors: Sourish Bhattacharya, Priyanka Singh

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The process parameters, starch-water ratio (A, (w/v) %), pH of suspension (B), Temperature(C, °C) and Time (D, hrs.)., were optimized for the preparation of starch-lysine conjugate and studying their effect on stability of emulsions by calculating emulsion stability index using response surface methodology. The optimized conditions are pH 9.0, temperature 60oC, reaction time 6 hrs, starch:water ratio 1:2.5, having emulsion stability index was 0.72.

Keywords: Emulsion stability index, pH of suspension, Starch-water ratio, Temperature, Time.

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Authors: Zarmina Gillani, Nuzhat Huma, Aysha Sameen, Mulazim Hussain Bukhari

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Whey is an excellent food ingredient owing to its high nutritive value and its functional properties. However, composition of whey varies depending on composition of milk, processing conditions, processing method, and its whey protein content. The aim of this study was to prepare a whey powder from raw whey and to determine the influence of different processing temperatures (160 and 180 °C) on the physicochemical, functional properties during storage of 180 days and on whey protein denaturation. Results have shown that temperature significantly (P < 0.05) affects the pH, acidity, non-protein nitrogen (NPN), protein total soluble solids, fat and lactose contents. Significantly (p < 0.05) higher foaming capacity (FC), foam stability (FS), whey protein nitrogen index (WPNI), and a lower turbidity and solubility index (SI) were observed in whey powder processed at 160 °C compared to whey powder processed at 180 °C. During storage of 180 days, slow but progressive changes were noticed on the physicochemical and functional properties of whey powder. Reverse phase-HPLC analysis revealed a significant (P < 0.05) effect of temperature on whey protein contents. Denaturation of β-Lactoglobulin is followed by α-lacalbumin, casein glycomacropeptide (CMP/GMP), and bovine serum albumin (BSA).

Keywords: Whey powder, temperature, denaturation, reverse phase – HPLC.

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Authors: P. O. Angienda, D. J. Hill

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The purpose of this study was to elucidate the factors affecting antimicrobial effectiveness of essential oils against food spoilage and pathogenic bacteria. The minimum inhibition concentrations (MIC) of the essential oils, were determined by turbidimetric technique using Biocreen C, analyzer. The effects of pH ranging from 7.3 to 5.5 in absence and presence of essential oils and/or NaCl on the lag time and mean generation time of the bacteria at 370C, were carried out and results were determined showed that, combination of low pH and essential oil at 370C had additive effects against the test micro-organisms. The combination of 1.2 % (w/v) of NaCl and clove essential oil at 0.0325% (v/v) was effective against E. coli. The use of concentrations less than MIC in combination with low pH and or NaCl has the potential of being used as an alternative to “traditional food preservatives".

Keywords: Antimicrobial, Bacteria, Bioscreen C, essential oil.

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Authors: Chih-Hung Wu, Chih-Chin Lai, Chun-Yen Chen, Yan-He Chen

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Interpretation of aerial images is an important task in various applications. Image segmentation can be viewed as the essential step for extracting information from aerial images. Among many developed segmentation methods, the technique of clustering has been extensively investigated and used. However, determining the number of clusters in an image is inherently a difficult problem, especially when a priori information on the aerial image is unavailable. This study proposes a support vector machine approach for clustering aerial images. Three cluster validity indices, distance-based index, Davies-Bouldin index, and Xie-Beni index, are utilized as quantitative measures of the quality of clustering results. Comparisons on the effectiveness of these indices and various parameters settings on the proposed methods are conducted. Experimental results are provided to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Keywords: Aerial imaging, image segmentation, machine learning, support vector machine, cluster validity index

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Authors: Ichihan Tai, Bill Olson, Paul Blessner

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Traditional early warning systems that alarm against crisis are generally based on structured or numerical data; therefore, a system that can make predictions based on unstructured textual data, an uncorrelated data source, is a great complement to the traditional early warning systems. The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index (VIX), commonly referred to as the fear index, measures the cost of insurance against market crash, and spikes in the event of crisis. In this study, news data is consumed for prediction of whether there will be a market-wide crisis by predicting the movement of the fear index, and the historical references to similar events are presented in an unsupervised manner. Topic modeling-based prediction and representation are made based on daily news data between 1990 and 2015 from The Wall Street Journal against VIX index data from CBOE.

Keywords: Early Warning System, Knowledge Management, Topic Modeling, Market Prediction.

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Authors: Oladotun A. Fatoki, Deborah A. Onifade

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Spoilage occurs in plant produce due to the action of field and storage microorganisms. The conditions of storage can also cause physiological spoilage. Various methods exist to ensure that these food substances maintain their quality long after harvesting. However, many of these methods either fail to keep the plant for the required period or predispose the plant to other spoilage risks. The major shortcoming posed by the use of many antimicrobials is the chemical residues it deposits in the food substance. The use of plants in preservation has been in use for a long period, though little understood then, it served its purposes. A better understanding of the roles of these plant parts in increasing the shelf life of farm produce has helped in the creation of more effective and safer means of pest and microbial control. This can be extended to plants that have not been used for these purposes initially. Microbial sources should also be investigated as these have provided cheaper sources of secondary metabolites.

Keywords: Antimicrobials, Food preservation, Phytochemicals

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Authors: Kejun Zhuang, Zhaohui Wen

Abstract:

This paper is concerned with a nonautonomous three species food chain model with Crowley–Martin type functional response and time delay. Using the Mawhin-s continuation theorem in theory of degree, sufficient conditions for existence of periodic solutions are obtained.

Keywords: Periodic solutions, coincidence degree, food chain model, Crowley–Martin functional response.

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Authors: Mohammad Hosseini

Abstract:

Ultrafast transistor laser investigated here has the graded index separate confinement heterostructure (GRIN-SCH) in its base region. Resonance-free optical frequency response with -3 dB bandwidth of more than 26 GHz has been achieved for a single quantum well transistor laser by using graded index layers of AlξGa1-ξAs (ξ: 0.1→0) in the left side of quantum well and AlξGa1-ξAs (ξ: 0.05→0) in the right side of quantum well. All required parameters, including quantum well and base transit time, optical confinement factor and spontaneous recombination lifetime, have been calculated using a self-consistent charge control model.

Keywords: Transistor laser, ultrafast, GRIN-SCH, -3db optical bandwidth, AlξGa1-ξAs.

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