Ionic liquids in the selective recovery of fat from composite foodstuffs

BACKGROUND: Ionic liquids (ILs) are able to dissolve a wide range of organic and inorganic molecules and have potential application in the separation and recovery of valuable components from wastes. The potential for ILs to separate sugar and fat from food waste is demonstrated using chocolate as a model system. RESULTS: The ILs 1‐(2‐cyanoethyl)‐3‐methylimidazolium bromide (cyanoMIMBr), 1‐propyl‐3‐methylimidazolium bromide (propylMIMBr), 1‐hexylpyridinium bromide (hexylPyrBr) and 1‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium chloride (butylMIMCl) were synthesised by microwave technology and fully characterised by mass spectrometry, thermogravimetric differential scanning calorimetery, thin layer chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The solubilities of the fat and carbohydrate components in the ILs are reported for the two main ingredients in chocolate. CyanoMIMBr and propylMIMBr selectively solubilise sugar leaving the fat insoluble. Both cyanoMIMBr and propylMIMBr have been used to successfully separate sugars and cocoa butter fat from white, milk and dark chocolate and the Fourier transform infrared spectra and thermogravimetric differential scanning calorimeter profiles of the extracted fat samples are in good agreement with reference material data. CONCLUSIONS: The ILs cyanoMIMBr and propylMIMBr are successful in the separation and recovery of fat from white, milk and dark chocolate, as confirmed by FTIR and TG‐DSC data. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry     

Crowdsourced Requirements Engineering Challenges and Solutions: A Software Industry Perspective

Software crowdsourcing (SW CS) is an evolving software development paradigm, in which crowds of people are asked to solve various problems through an open call (with the encouragement of prizes for the top solutions). Because of its dynamic nature, SW CS has been progressively accepted and adopted in the software industry. However, issues pertinent to the understanding of requirements among crowds of people and requirements engineers are yet to be clarified and explained. If the requirements are not clear to the development team, it has a significant effect on the quality of the software product. This study aims to identify the potential challenges faced by requirements engineers when conducting the SW–CS based requirements engineering (RE) process. Moreover, solutions to overcome these challenges are also identified. Qualitative data analysis is performed on the interview data collected from software industry professionals. Consequently, 20 SW–CS based RE challenges and their subsequent proposed solutions are devised, which are further grouped under seven categories. This study is beneficial for academicians, researchers and practitioners by providing detailed SW–CS based RE challenges and subsequent solutions that could eventually guide them to understand and effectively implement RE in SW CS.     

Ensemble Learning for Fetal Health Classification

: Cardiotocography (CTG) represents the fetus’s health inside the womb during labor. However, assessment of its readings can be a highly subjective process depending on the expertise of the obstetrician. Digital signals from fetal monitors acquire parameters (i.e., fetal heart rate, contractions, acceleration). Objective:: This paper aims to classify the CTG readings containing imbalanced healthy, suspected, and pathological fetus readings. Method:: We perform two sets of experiments. Firstly, we employ five classifiers: Random Forest (RF), Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost), Categorical Boosting (CatBoost), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM) without over-sampling to classify CTG readings into three categories: healthy, suspected, and pathological. Secondly, we employ an ensemble of the above-described classifiers with the over-sampling method. We use a random over-sampling technique to balance CTG records to train the ensemble models. We use 3602 CTG readings to train the ensemble classifiers and 1201 records to evaluate them. The outcomes of these classifiers are then fed into the soft voting classifier to obtain the most accurate results. Results:: Each classifier evaluates accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1-scores, and Area Under the Receiver Operating Curve (AUROC) values. Results reveal that the XGBoost, LGBM, and CatBoost classifiers yielded 99% accuracy. Conclusion:: Using ensemble classifiers over a balanced CTG dataset improves the detection accuracy compared to the previous studies and our first experiment. A soft voting classifier then eliminates the weakness of one individual classifier to yield superior performance of the overall model.     

Modification of barley dietary fiber through chemical treatments in combination with thermal treatment to improve its bioactive properties

The present research was carried out to observe the comparative effectiveness of different chemical treatments in combination with simultaneous thermal treatment on soluble (SDF) and insoluble dietary fiber (IDF) ratio to improve functional properties of barley. For this purpose, two varieties of barley, i.e., Haider-93 and Jau-87 were assessed for chemical composition, mineral, non-starch polysaccharides, and dietary fiber contents through respective methods. Two varieties were chemically treated through acid, alkaline, and consecutive acid–alkaline treatments in combination with thermal treatment. Results of chemical composition revealed that Jau-87 was higher in moisture (11.4%), crude fat (2.67%), and crude fiber (4.70%), whereas Haider-93 exhibited higher ash (2.56%) and crude protein content (12.7%). Moreover, barley is a rich source of potassium ranging from 4.77 to 5.07 g/kg. Likewise, main non-starch polysaccharides in barley were arabinoxylan (3.60–3.77%) and beta-glucan (3.65–3.67%). Furthermore, barley contains more IDF (12.00–12.40 g/100 g dm) than SDF (4.73–5.70 g/100 g dm). Additionally, modification of SDF (23.68%) and IDF (11.69%) ratio through acid treatment was nonsignificant, while acid–alkaline treatment showed highly significant results, i.e., 771.46% increased in SDF and 53.39% decreased in IDF. It is concluded that chemical treatments alone or in combination with pressure cooking increased SDF. However, simultaneous effect of acid and alkaline treatment most effectively increased the solubility of barley.     

Functional and health-endorsing properties of wheat and barley cell wall’s non-starch polysaccharides

Cereals have captured global importance owing to the presence of bioactive moieties in cell wall. Numerous components have been considered but non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) of cereals cell wall are of prime concern. In this comprehensive review, the basic aim is to elaborate the functional and nutritional importance of cereals cell wall with special reference to NSP. Among bioactive components of cell wall, NSP, such as arabinoxylans, ß-glucans, and arabinogalactans of wheat and barley, have gained much importance. Moreover, literature revealed that NSP have greater role as prebiotic, immunomodulator, antioxidant, anti-diabetic, and cardio-protector as well as major food applications.     

Synthesis and characterization of poly 2-N-acrylamido-2-methyl−1-propane sulfonic acid functionalized graphene oxide embedded electrolyte membrane using DOE for PEMFC

A novel proton exchange membrane consisting of 2-N-acrylamido-2-methyl−1-propane sulfonic acid modified graphene oxide nanocomposite (PAMPS-mGO), carboxylated poly(vinyl chloride) (CPVC), and poly 2-N-acrylamido-2-methyl−1-propane sulfonic acid (PAMPS) has been successfully prepared by simple and scalable polymer blending methodology. Different compositions of PEM in terms of its constituting precursors such as PAMPS-mGO, CPVC, and PAMPS were optimized by Placket Burman Design and their ion exchange capacity (IEC), oxidative stability, water uptake percentage, mechanical stability, and proton conductivity were evaluated. The amounts of significant precursors were further optimized by Central Composite Design. The membrane with excellent performance in PEMFC was obtained when appropriate proportions of CPVC (10%), PAMPS (20%), and PAMPS-mGO (20%) were blended. Among all membrane with mentioned composition exhibited IEC 1.3 mmol/g, oxidative stability 97.2%, WU 40.8%, proton conductivity 151 S/cm, water content 17.43, current density 1537 mA/cm² at 120°C, power density 566.5 mW/cm² at 120°C, Young modulus 797 MPa, tensile strength 16.8 MPa, and elongation at break % of 2.7 MPa. These results are in good comparison with PEM based on Nafion. Thus, the CPVC, PAMPS, and PAMPS-mGO-based composite PEM is a good candidate for PEMFC at elevated temperature under anhydrous conditions.     

A Secure Crypto Base Authentication and Communication Suite in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for IoT Applications

To monitor the functions of human body and their surroundings Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is used, which are based on low powered and light weight wireless sensors devices. WBAN highly supports numerous applications but this study will focus on the security of ubiquitous healthcare applications. In E-health research monitoring the critical data in terms of security has become a major challenge as WBAN deals with various threats day by day. Therefore the design of secure and reasonably resource optimal algorithms with a robust key generation and management scheme is today’s need. There must be only authorized user’s who can have access to patient related data; otherwise it can be exploited by anyone. This proposed study is aiming to formulate the two security suite for WBAN, which comprises on KBS keys, KAISC and Hash algorithm three improved versions of key management procedures and authentication procedure respectively. Firstly the KBS Keys and improved Hashing suite which is an independent and adaptive key management and authentication scheme for improving the security of WBANs will be used, and secondly KAISC will be used for inter-sensor communication and key management security scheme. All above mentioned procedures will be suitably blend with the encryption and decryption process which will securely send the patient’s critical data to the base station and further to the concerned doctor. The novelty of work is that the proposed methodology is not only simple but also advanced and much secured procedure of key generation and management that will be further validated by the performance analysis. This technique will be beneficial for the continuous monitoring of patient’s critical data in remote areas also.