Detection of Adulteration in Saffron Samples Using Electronic Nose

Saffron is the commercial name of the dried stigmas of Crocus sativus L. flower. Due to the high cost of saffron, adulteration sometimes occurs in the local market. In this study, the aroma fingerprints of saffron, saffron with yellow styles, safflower, and dyed corn stigma were detected by an electronic nose system. The features of the obtained signals from electronic nose system were extracted and used for data analysis. In this work, principal component analysis was used and the results were confirmed by back propagation artificial neural networks. The results revealed that the system can recognize the saffron adulteration satisfactorily. As a conclusion, it was found that the electronic nose could provide good separation of the saffron and adulterated one (safflower and other adulteration) as 100 and 86.87% classification accuracy, respectively, by means of artificial neural networks. The electronic nose was able to differentiate non-adulterated and adulterated saffron at higher than 10% adulteration level successfully.     

Mechanical,Physical, Antioxidant,and Antimicrobial Properties of Gelatin Films Incorporated with Thymol for Potential Use as Nano Wound Dressing

The aim of this study was to determine the properties of gelatin films incorporated with thymol. Gelatin films were prepared from gelatin solutions (10% w/v) containing thymol (1, 2, 4, and 8% w/w), glycerol (25% w/w) as plasticizer, and glutaraldehyde (2% w/w) as cross‐linker. Cross‐likened films showed higher tensile strength, higher elongation at break, lower Young's modulus, lower water solubility, lower swelling, lower water uptake, and lower water vapor permeability. Incorporation of thymol caused a significant decrease in tensile strength, increase in elongation at break, decrease in Young's modulus, increase in water solubility, decrease in swelling and water uptake, and increase in water vapor permeability slightly. The films incorporated with thymol exhibited excellent antioxidant and antibacterial properties. The antibacterial activity of the films containing thymol was greatest against Staphylucoccus aureus followed by Bacillus subtilis followed by Escherichia coli and then by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Thus, gelatin films‐containing thymol can be used as safe and effective source of natural antioxidant and antimicrobial agents with the purpose of evaluating their potential use as modern nano wound dressing. Practical Application : This study clearly demonstrates the potential of gelatin films incorporated with thymol as natural antioxidant and antimicrobial nano film. Such antimicrobial films exhibited excellent mechanical, physical, and water activities and could be used as antibacterial nano wound dressing against wounds burn pathogens.     

Evaluation of eight cow-side ketone tests in milk for detection of subclinical ketosis in dairy cows

The objective of this study was to evaluate eight cowside ketone tests when used with milk for detection of subclinical ketosis. A total of 469 dairy cows in the first week of lactation were studied. Twelve percent of these cows had subclinical ketosis, defined as >1400 micromol of beta-hydroxybutyrate/L of blood serum. The Pink test liquid and the Ketolac test strip were highly sensitive for subclinical ketosis when used with milk. The Uriscan and Rapignost test strips were poorly sensitive; the Ketostix, Ketur-Test, and Medi-Test-Keton test strips and the Acetonreagenz test tablet were insensitive for subclinical ketosis when used with milk. Pink and Ketolac milk ketone tests are potentially useful tools for use in a routine monitoring program to detect subclinical ketosis in early postpartal dairy cows.     

Synthesis of mesoporous nanocrystalline zirconia with tetragonal crystallite phase by using ethylene diamine as precipitation agent

Mesoporous nanocrystalline zirconia with high surface area and pure tetragonal crystallite phase has been prepared by bifunctional ethylene diamine as both precipitating agent for ZrO(NO₃)₂ to ZrO(OH)₂ and colloidal protecting agent for the ZrO(OH)₂ nanoparticles. The effect of refluxing time and temperature on the structural properties of the zirconia were investigated. The obtained results showed that the increasing in refluxing time and temperature improved the thermal stability and increased the tetragonal content of the zirconia. The results also showed that the addition of Pluronic P123 block copolymer surfactant acted as a cosurfactant and increased the specific surface area of the zirconia.     

A Worst-Case Robust Combination Method of Beam-Forming and Orthogonal Space–Time Block Coding

In this paper, a new robust multi-input multi-output system is proposed in a perturbed wireless channel which is to model imperfect channel information at the source side when beam-forming and orthogonal space–time block coding is utilized. The channel perturbation is bounded by a predefined variation based on worst-case robust design. Beam-forming is used to improve the performance of the system expressed by the upper bound of pairwise error probability of symbols. In this paper firstly, the maximum value of pairwise error probability is obtained in a closed form when channel perturbation is kept below a threshold. Then the beam-forming matrix is designed to minimize the pairwise error probability subject to a predefined maximum transmitting power. This approach provides near optimal results due to using the upper bound of pairwise error probability. It shows good performance based on the symbol error rate criterion compared with other existing methods of the multiple input multiple output system.     

A wideband receiver front-end using 1st and 3rd harmonics of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">N</Emphasis>-path filter response

Harmonic selectivity and inaccessibility to accurate low-power high frequency clock generator are two main imperfections in the tunable N-path filters. In this paper, conventional N-path filter and conventional harmonic rejection (HR) N-path architectures are analyzed, and related equations are derived and are verified by simulation results. Furthermore, a wideband tunable receiver front-end using HR N-path switching systems is proposed. Using third harmonic of filter response instead of fundamental harmonic, the required input clock frequency in the multi-phase clock generator is decreased by a factor of three. The receiver front-end benefits low and high frequency bands. At low frequency band (0.4–1.2 GHz) the first harmonic, and at high frequency band (1.2–3.3 GHz) the third harmonic of filter response are selected and are downconverted to the baseband frequency. The structure is designed and is simulated using CMOS-90 nm technology in schematic level. The total power consumption and \(S_{11}\) are \(<27.14\) mW and \(-13.5\) dB, respectively. Furthermore, NF at low and high frequency bands are 2.56 and 3.53 dB, respectively.     

Application of multinomial and ordinal logistic regression to model injury severity of truck crashes,using violation and crash data

Railway Engineering Science - In 2016 alone, around 4000 people died in crashes involving trucks in the USA, with 21% of these fatalities involving only single-unit trucks. Much research has...     

A Novel Propolis Wax-Based Organogel: Effect of Oil Type on Its Formation,Crystal Structure and Thermal Properties

In this work, the potential application of propolis wax (PW) as a novel organogelator was investigated in different oils (canola, sesame, sunflower and flaxseed oil). PW at 2% (w/w) concentration produced a thick organogel at 5, 10 and 15 °C, with needle‐like crystals, suggesting that PW is a relatively efficient structuring agent for organogel formation. The oil binding capacity of the organogel with canola oil was lower than that of the other organogels, and the gelling time of flaxseed organogel with lower oil viscosity was shorter. The X‐ray diffraction measurements of the crystals showed β′‐form crystals, with no influence of oil type. In FTIR results, no chemical intermolecular interactions that were observed indicated physical bonds in the organogel network. DSC analysis was carried out to obtain greater insight into the thermal behavior of PW organogels. No significant differences were observed. The textural properties of PW organogels were stable over 30 days of storage. Flaxseed oil organogel had the greatest firmness and stickiness. These results showed the effect of oil viscosity on PW gel behavior.     

Specificity enhancement in classification of breast MRI lesion based on multi-classifier

In the conventional CMAC-based adaptive controller design, a switching compensator is designed to guarantee system stability in the Lyapunov stability sense but the undesirable chattering phenomenon occurs. This paper proposes a CMAC-based smooth adaptive neural control (CSANC) system that is composed of a neural controller and a saturation compensator. The neural controller uses a CMAC neural network to online mimic an ideal controller and the saturation compensator is designed to dispel the approximation error between the ideal controller and neural controller without any chattering phenomena. The parameter adaptive algorithms of the CSANC system are derived in the sense of Lyapunov stability, so the system stability can be guaranteed. Finally, the proposed CSANC system is applied to a Chua’s chaotic circuit and a DC motor driver. Simulation and experimental results show the CSANC system can achieve a favorable tracking performance. It should be emphasized that the development of the proposed CSANC system doesn’t need the knowledge of the system dynamics.