COLOR VISION SYSTEM FOR RIPENESS INSPECTION OF OIL PALM ELAEIS GUINEENSIS

In checking harvesting discipline and quality control for oil palm fruits, color has presumably been an important guide to whether the oil content has reached a maximum where the fruit bunch is ready for cutting. However, establishing a single and harmonious standard base on color is a very contentious issue in the oil palm industry because of the subjective nature of the human vision of color. This was further complicated due to the lack of information on fruit color upon which to base a definite ripeness criterion. We demonstrated in this paper that this problem can be solved using machine vision technology. Methods used were to treat color in HSI (Hue, Saturation and Intensity) color space and applied multivariate discriminant analysis. These have proven to be highly effective for color evaluation and image processing. The vision system was trained to classify oil palms into four quality grades according to PORIM (Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia) inspection standards. These are the unripe, the underripe, the optimally ripe and the overripe classes. Depending upon the quality feature evaluated, misclassification by the vision system varied from 5 to 12% but averaged at about 8%. Machine vision disagreement ranged from 2 to 19%.     

An automatic subdigraph renovation plan for failure recovery of composite semantic Web services

A Web service-based system never fulfills a user＇s goal unless a failure recovery approach exists. It is inevitable that several Web services may either perish or fail before or during transactions. The completion of a composite process relies on the smooth execution of all constituent Web services. A mediator acts as an intermediary between providers and consumers to monitor the execution of these services. If a service fails, the mediator has to recover the whole composite process or else jeopardize achieving the intended goals. The atomic replacement of a perished Web service usually does not apply because the process of locating a matched Web service is unreliable. Even the system cannot depend on the replacement of the dead service with a com- posite service. In this paper, we propose an automatic renova- tion plan for failure recovery of composite semantic services based on an approach of subdigraph replacement. A replacement subdigraph is posed in lieu of an original subdigraph, which includes the failed service. The replacement is done in two separate phases, ofltine and online, to make the recovery faster. The ofitine phase foresees all possible subdigraphs, pre-calculates them, and ranks several possible replacements. The online phase compensates the unwanted effects and executes the replacement subdigraph in lieu of the original subdigraph. We have evaluated our approach during an experiment and have found that we could recover more than half of the simulated failures. These achievements show a significant improvement compared to current approaches     

Cu<Superscript>2+</Superscript> and Al<Superscript>3+</Superscript> co-substituted cobalt ferrite: structural analysis,morphology and magnetic properties

Cu–Al substituted Co ferrite nanopowders, Co_1?x Cu _x Fe_2?x Al _x O₄ (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 0.8) were synthesized by the co-precipitation method. The effect of Cu–Al substitution on the structural and magnetic properties have been investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) are used for studying the effect of variation in the Cu–Al substitution and its impact on particle size, magnetic properties such as M _s and H _c . Cu–Al substitution occurs and produce a secondary phase, α-Fe ₂ O ₃. The crystallite size of the powder calcined at 800 ^°C was in the range of 19–26 nm. The lattice parameter decreases with increasing Cu–Al content. The nanostructural features were examined by FESEM images. Infrared absorption (IR) spectra shows two vibrational bands; at around 600 (v ₁) and 400 cm ^?1 (v ₂). They are attributed to the tetrahedral and octahedral group complexes of the spinel lattice, respectively. It was found that the physical and magnetic properties have changed with Cu–Al contents. The saturation magnetization decreases with the increase in Cu–Al substitution. The reduction of coercive force, saturation magnetization and magnetic moments are may be due to dilution of the magnetic interaction.     

New public-key cryptosystem

The development of a new public-key cryptosystem is discussed. This system is a hybrid combination of the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) and knapsack crypto-systems. The message is encrypted in two stages using the knapsack algorithm followed by the RSA algorithm, and then decrypted in reverse order. The mathematics of the knapsack and RSA algorithms, a security analysis of the hybrid system, and a small computer simulation example are all included. The major advantages of this system, when compared with the knapsack and RSA crypto-systems, are higher speed and greater security.     

QUALITY CHANGES OF REFINED-BLEACHED-DEODORIZED (RBD) PALM OLEIN, SOYBEAN OIL AND THEIR BLENDS DURING DEEP-FAT FRYING

The quality changes of refined, bleached and deodorized palm olein (RBDPO) and soybean oil (SBO) and their blends were investigated in this study. The oils were studied during intermittent frying of potato chips at 180PT5C for 5 h per day for 5 consecutive days. The indices used for assessment of changes in quality of the oils were fatty acid composition (FAC), peroxide value (PV), anisidine value (AnV), % free fatty acid (FFA), iodine value (IV), % polar component, polymer content, color, viscosity, smoke point and foaming tendency. The results showed that RBDPO was superior to SBO in frying performance in terms of resistance to oxidation, changes in IV, AnV, foaming tendency, % polar component and polymer content. However, SBO performed better than RBDPO with respect to color, viscosity, FAA content and smoke point. Sensory evaluation showed that potato chips fried in both RBDPO and SBO were equally acceptable by the panelists.     

Simple phase meter with lead/lag indication

A simple and inexpensive circuit for measuring the phase angle difference between two waves with lead/lag indication is described. The proposed circuit may be adopted in the laboratory as an attachment to a commercially available analogue/ digital multimeter to measure the phase difference. The response is linear over a range 0 to + 180^° and is unaffected by the input frequencies in the range 6 Hz–1.2 kHz. For distorted waveforms, the paper also gives a simple scheme to measure the displacement angle which in turn suggests its use in a high-power-factor self-compensated alternating voltage controller.