A novel technique to minimise energy and pollution in the dyeing of linen fabric

Garments made from linen fabrics have a natural feel and drape. Most commercially available direct and reactive dyes have only a moderate affinity for this cellulosic fibre, although this lack of affinity can be overcome by the use of electrolytes. As a result, high volumes of wastewater containing large amounts of chemicals are discharged from the typical cellulosic material dyehouse. The ‘no‐salt dyeing’ of linen fabric with reactive and direct dyes was achieved by treating linen fabrics with chitosan in a microwave oven. After using the novel dye method, no observed enhancement of either wash or light fastness properties was seen. Dyebath reuse for both reactive and direct dyes was carried out in order to reduce the environmental impact of the dyes. This dyeing method was then applied to dyeing linen fabrics, with each of the items of clothing subjected to layout and cutting according to the design’s patterns; the dyeing results are discussed in this paper.     

Improved Software Implementation for Montgomery Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem

The last decade witnessed rapid increase in multimedia and other applications that require transmitting and protecting huge amount of data streams simultaneously. For such applications, a high-performance cryptosystem is compulsory to provide necessary security services. Elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) has been introduced as a considerable option. However, the usual sequential implementation of ECC and the standard elliptic curve (EC) form cannot achieve required performance level. Moreover, the widely used Hardware implementation of ECC is costly option and may be not affordable. This research aims to develop a high-performance parallel software implementation for ECC. To achieve this, many experiments were performed to examine several factors affecting ECC performance including the projective coordinates, the scalar multiplication algorithm, the elliptic curve (EC) form, and the parallel implementation. The ECC performance was analyzed using the different factors to tune-up them and select the best choices to increase the speed of the cryptosystem. Experimental results illustrated that parallel Montgomery ECC implementation using homogenous projection achieves the highest performance level, since it scored the shortest time delay for ECC computations. In addition, results showed that NAF algorithm consumes less time to perform encryption and scalar multiplication operations in comparison with Montgomery ladder and binary methods. Java multi-threading technique was adopted to implement ECC computations in parallel. The proposed multithreaded Montgomery ECC implementation significantly improves the performance level compared to previously presented parallel and sequential implementations.     

Synthesis of Organic Functionalized Silica from Rice Husk as an Antibacterial Agents

Silicon - In the present study, silica-aminothiazole (RHAC-ATH) and silica-aminophenol (RHAC-AMPH) have been prepared and characterized by different techniques. Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR)...     

Efficient Computer Aided Diagnosis System for Hepatic Tumors Using Computed Tomography Scans

One of the leading causes of mortality worldwide is liver cancer. The earlier the detection of hepatic tumors, the lower the mortality rate. This paper introduces a computer-aided diagnosis system to extract hepatic tumors from computed tomography scans and classify them into malignant or benign tumors. Segmenting hepatic tumors from computed tomography scans is considered a challenging task due to the fuzziness in the liver pixel range, intensity values overlap between the liver and neighboring organs, high noise from computed tomography scanner, and large variance in tumors shapes. The proposed method consists of three main stages; liver segmentation using Fast Generalized Fuzzy C-Means, tumor segmentation using dynamic thresholding, and the tumor's classification into malignant/benign using support vector machines classifier. The performance of the proposed system was evaluated using three liver benchmark datasets, which are MICCAI-Sliver07, LiTS17, and 3Dircadb. The proposed computer adided diagnosis system achieved an average accuracy of 96.75%, sensetivity of 96.38%, specificity of 95.20% and Dice similarity coefficient of 95.13%.     

LiNbO3 thin films at different stirrer time: synthesis using chemical bath deposition (CBD) method

Chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique is used to prepare lithium niobate (LN; LiNbO₃) nanostructures. The deposition process was maintained over a quartz substrate at different chemical interaction times (3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 h) using the CBD method. The structural properties showed that sample stirring for 12 h resulted in the LN crystalline hexagonal peak at the (012) diffraction plane at 2θ?=?23.75. Scanning electron microscopy showed that the samples became smoother, more homogeneous and showed a better distribution with increasing chemical interaction time. As the chemical interaction time increased, atomic force microscopy revealed a reduction in the grain size and an increase in the surface roughness. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy results confirmed the formation of the LN material and agreed with X-ray diffraction findings.

     

Validation of HPLC method for determination of tetracycline residues in chicken meat and liver

High-performance liquid chromatographic method with diode-array detection (HPLC–DAD) was optimised and validated for determination of tetracyclines (TCs) residue in chicken meat and liver through evaluating each step of various methods. The principle steps involved ultrasonic-assisted extraction of TCs from chicken samples by 2 ml of 20% trichloroacetic acid and citrate buffer (pH 4) which gave a clearer supernatant and high recovery, followed by centrifugation and purification on SPE (Strata C18-E cartridge) using 10 ml of 0.01 M methanolic oxalic acid for TCs elution. Separation was on reversed-phase column (Nuclosil 100 C18, 25 cm × 4.6 mm ID, 5 μ) by multisteps gradient elution which provided a better chromatographic peak resolution and the late eluting peaks were as sharp as those eluting earlier. Monitoring was at 351 nm which gave a higher detector response factor. Validity study of the method revealed that all obtained calibration curves showed good linearity (r² > 0.999) over the range of 50–5000 ng. Sensitivity was found to be 1.44, 1.90, 0.95 and 1.23 ng for OTC, TC, CTC and DC, respectively. Accuracy was in the range of 71.88–92.44.3% and 68.88–84.84% for meat and liver, respectively. Precision was lower than 10% in all cases indicating that the method can be used as a validated method. Limit of detection (LOD) was found to be 4.4, 5, 13 and 10 ng for OTC, TC, CTC and DC, respectively. The corresponding values of limit of quantitation (LOQ) were 10, 13, 27 and 22 ng.     

Monitoring demyelination and remyelination by magnetization transfer imaging in the mouse brain at 9.4 T

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess quantitatively structural changes in myelin content occurring during demyelination and remyelination by magnetization transfer imaging (MTI). MATERIALS AND METHODS: In a reversible model of demyelination with no axonal loss, mice intoxicated by cuprizone were studied by MTI in vivo at 9.4 T. MRI data were compared to histopathological examinations. RESULTS: Data revealed that the magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) decreased significantly during demyelination and increased during remyelination with strong correlation to the myelin content (r = 0.79, P = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that MTR is a sensitive and reproducible quantitative marker to assess myelin loss and repair. This may lead to in vivo monitoring of therapeutic strategies promoting remyelination.     

A study of the electrochemical oxidation of hydrogen peroxide on a platinum rotating disk electrode in the presence of calcium ions using Michaelis-Menten kinetics and binding isotherm analysis

The present work demonstrates a potential suppression in the electrochemical signal of H₂O₂ oxidation due to the presence of Ca²⁺ ions. A mechanistic scheme was proposed to include a reversible interaction of Ca²⁺ ions with either the electrode surface binding sites (competitive) or the complex sites (non-competitive). The degree of inhibition was inspected by evaluating the kinetic currents as a function of [Ca²⁺] applying Koutecky-Levich kinetics. These observations were further supported with models based on enzyme kinetics such as Michaelis-Menten model applying Lineweaver-Burk plot along with non-linear least-square fitting analysis. The experimental results suggests that the strength of the complex binding sites decreases considerably with increasing [Ca²⁺] and that a single H₂O₂ molecule is required to combine with one available active binding site.     

Biogenic amines in chicken meat products in relation to bacterial load,pH value and sodium chloride content

Exogenous biogenic amines may present food poisoning hazards, especially when coupled with additional risk factors. In recent years, consumption of poultry meat and poultry meat products has increased. Therefore, the goals of this work were to estimate biogenic amines in chicken meat products and to find a correlation to bacterial quality, pH value and/or NaCl content. A total number of 60 random samples of chicken frankfurter, luncheon and keshta were collected from Cairo and Assiut supermarkets and groceries. The samples were analyzed for estimation of histamine, tyramine, cadaverine and puerscine. The results were in low levels and varied in each product. The bacterial quality was evaluated with respect to total colony, Enterobacteriaceae, coliforms, Lactobacillaceae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa counts. These amineproducering bacteria were detected in low amounts. Such findings as well as pH value and NaCl content correlated with amines levels.