A fog-based security framework for intelligent traffic light control system

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The world is facing many problems including that of traffic congestion. To highlight the issue of traffic congestion worldwide specially in urban areas and to...     

Improving security of the Internet of Things via RF fingerprinting based device identification system

Neural Computing and Applications - Security is one of the primary concerns when designing wireless networks. Along detecting user identity, it is also important to detect the devices at the...     

The Multifunctional Sactipeptide Ruminococcin C1 Displays Potent Antibacterial Activity In Vivo as Well as Other Beneficial Properties for Human Health

The world is on the verge of a major antibiotic crisis as the emergence of resistant bacteria is increasing, and very few novel molecules have been discovered since the 1960s. In this context, scientists have been exploring alternatives to conventional antibiotics, such as ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs). Interestingly, the highly potent in vitro antibacterial activity and safety of ruminococcin C1, a recently discovered RiPP belonging to the sactipeptide subclass, has been demonstrated. The present results show that ruminococcin C1 is efficient at curing infection and at protecting challenged mice from Clostridium perfringens with a lower dose than the conventional antibiotic vancomycin. Moreover, antimicrobial peptide (AMP) is also effective against this pathogen in the complex microbial community of the gut environment, with a selective impact on a few bacterial genera, while maintaining a global homeostasis of the microbiome. In addition, ruminococcin C1 exhibits other biological activities that could be beneficial for human health, as well as other fields of applications. Overall, this study, by using an in vivo infection approach, confirms the antimicrobial clinical potential and highlights the multiple functional properties of ruminococcin C1, thus extending its therapeutic interest.     

Mechanical characterization and chemical resistances of cured unsaturated polyester resins modified with vinyl ester resins based on recycled poly(ethylene terephthalate)

Unsaturated polyester resin (UP) was prepared from glycolyzed oligomer of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) waste based on diethylene glycol (DEG). New diacrylate and dimethacrylate vinyl ester resins prepared from glycolysis of PET with tetraethylene glycol were blended with UP to study the mechanical characteristics of the cured UP. The vinyl ester resins were used as crosslinking agents for unsaturated polyester resin diluted with styrene, using free‐radical initiator and accelerator. The mechanical properties of the cured UP resins were evaluated. The compressive properties of the cured UP/styrene resins in the presence of different vinyl ester concentrations were evaluated. Increasing the vinyl ester content led to a pronounced improvement in the compression strength. The chemical resistances of the cured resins were evaluated through hot water, solvents, acid, and alkali resistance measurements. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 3175–3182, 2007     

A sustainable approach to the recycling of rice straw through pelletization and controlled burning

A technique for controlled burning of rice straw is presented. It relies on well-designed rice straw pellets to be burned in fluidized bed. The developed pellets have high burning rate, no fly ashes emissions and minimum bed fouling. The pellets are manufactured from ground rice straw in a disc pelletizer with the aid of bonding and suitable additive materials. The pellets are tested under controlled conditions in a test rig, which represents a single pellet fluidized bed. It is equipped with a nitrogen gun to eject the pellet and freeze the reaction at any predetermined time during combustion. The ejected pellets are weighed as well as elementary analyzed for both carbon and hydrogen, to calculate the burning rate as well as the combustion efficiency, respectively. The effect of several parameters has been evaluated including straw particle size, pellet size, type and concentration of bonding material as well as anti-sintering additives. Also, the pellets’ mechanical characteristics have been evaluated. It has been found that char combustion phase represents the controlling phase of the pellet combustion. The burning rate is higher as the void fraction of the pellet is higher. Starch showed better combustion and mechanical characteristics out of the five tested bonding materials. Adding kaolin to the pellets results in improving the sintering characteristics of the pellets. The experimental results were compared with two combustion models: the oxygen diffusion controlled and the kinetic-diffusion models. It has been found that oxygen diffusion controlled model more accurately simulates the combustion of the pellet during its char combustion phase. The model has been used to evaluate the effect of some operational parameters on the pellet combustion characteristics such as bed temperature, gas flow and oxygen concentration.     

Preparation and characterizations of activated carbon from kenaf fiber for equilibrium adsorption studies of copper from wastewater

The potential of activated carbon prepared from kenaf fiber (KF) to remove copper (II) from aqueous effluents was investigated. The fibers were first semi-carbonized, then impregnated with potassium hydroxide (KOH) and finally activated by using carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas to produce activated carbon. Pore structure and physical characteristics of the prepared kenaf fiber activated carbon (KFAC) were determined. Adsorption studies for divalent copper (Cu) ions were carried out to delineate the effect of contact time, temperature, pH and initial metal ion concentration on equilibrium adsorption capacity. The experimental data followed pseudo-second-order kinetics and Elovich Model than pseudo-first-order. Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin models were implemented to analyze the parameters for adsorption at 30 °C, 50 °C and 70 °C. Thermodynamic parameters such as ??G ^o , ??H ^o and ??S ^o which represent Gibbs free energy, enthalpy and entropy, respectively, were evaluated. It was concluded that activated carbon from kenaf fiber (KFAC) can be used as an efficient adsorbent for removal of Cu (II) from synthetic wastewater.     

Synthesis and application of magnetite polyacrylamide amino-amidoxime nano-composites as adsorbents for water pollutants

In this work, we aimed to develop a feasible method for in situ preparation of a magnetite ionic polymer nanocomposite at room temperature. For this purpose, acrylonitrile (AN) and 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid (AMPS) monomers were copolymerized and crosslinked using different monomer mol ratios in the presence of N,N-methylenebisacrylamide (MBA) as crosslinker to produce ionic crosslinked polymers P(AN-co-AMPS. The nitrile groups were converted to amine amidoxime by reacting with hydroxylamine to increase the adsorption characteristics of the ionic polymers. The produced polymers were swelled in iron cations produced from the reaction of ferric chloride and potassium iodide, followed by reaction with an ammonium hydroxide solution to produce magnetite nano-polymer composites. We performed FT-IR and XRD analysis to determine the chemical and crystalline structures, and assessed the morphologies and magnetite content using SEM, TEM and TGA analyses. We investigated the adsorption capacity and mechanism of the prepared magnetite nano-composites as adsorbents for methylene blue, Co²⁺ and Ni²⁺ cations from water.     

Enhanced dynamic credential generation scheme for protection of user identity in mobile-cloud computing

To improve the resource limitation of mobile devices, mobile users may utilize cloud-computational and storage services. Although the utilization of the cloud services improves the processing and storage capacity of mobile devices, the migration of confidential information on untrusted cloud raises security and privacy issues. Considering the security of mobile-cloud-computing subscribers’ information, a mechanism to authenticate legitimate mobile users in the cloud environment is sought. Usually, the mobile users are authenticated in the cloud environment through digital credential methods, such as password. Once the users’ credential information theft occurs, the adversary can use the hacked information for impersonating the mobile user later on. The alarming situation is that the mobile user is unaware about adversary’s malicious activities. In this paper, a light-weight security scheme is proposed for mobile user in cloud environment to protect the mobile user’s identity with dynamic credentials. The proposed scheme offloads the frequently occurring dynamic credential generation operations on a trusted entity to keep minimum processing burden on the mobile device. To enhance the security and reliability of the scheme, the credential information is updated frequently on the basis of mobile-cloud packets exchange. Furthermore, the proposed scheme is compared with the existing scheme on the basis of performance metrics i.e. turnaround time and energy consumption. The experimental results for the proposed scheme showed significant improvement in turnaround time and energy consumption as compared to the existing scheme.