Modeling breakage and motion of black pepper seeds in cryogenic mill

The present investigation aims to represent three-dimensional motion and breakage phenomena of black pepper seeds in the cryogenic mill (hammer mill) using discrete element method (DEM). In DEM modeling, bonded particle model was coupled with Hertz-Mindlin contact model. Calibration method was used to select appropriate model (bond) parameters. The calibrated set of bond parameters includes 3.12?×?10¹¹?Pa?m^?1 normal stiffness; 1.56?×?10¹¹?Pa?m^?1 shear stiffness; 3.88?×?10⁸?Pa critical normal stiffness; 1.94?×?10⁸?Pa critical shear stiffness. Besides, the validity of calibrated parameters was tested in the hammer mill. The observed qualitative and quantitative results (breakage and flow pattern) of numerical and experimental approaches were in good agreement. Based on these results, a few prefatory suggestions were provided to improve the design aspects of the mill. Overall, DEM modeling offered a better understanding of particle breakage and flow pattern in the mill.     

PV Analyst: Coupling ArcGIS with TRNSYS to assess distributed photovoltaic potential in urban areas

This study presents a means to extend the functionality of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in assessing distributed photovoltaic (PV) potential in urban areas, via the new ArcGIS extension: PV Analyst. A methodology is proposed for coupling ArcGIS with TRNSYS that enables the PV Analyst extension to use the capabilities of 4 and 5-parameter PV array performance models and the irradiance components in TRNSYS for solar energy simulations in geospatial contexts. Because PV Analyst is embedded within the ArcMap environment, part of ArcGIS software package, the strong capabilities of ArcGIS and other ArcGIS extensions such as 3D Analyst, Spatial Analyst and Tracking Analyst can be fully utilized with PV Analyst’s functionalities. This paper describes the concept and details of the extension development, as well as its application to the Pollock Commons area at the Pennsylvania State University.     

On robustness against JPEG2000: a performance evaluation of wavelet-based watermarking techniques

With the emergence of new scalable coding standards, such as JPEG2000, multimedia is stored as scalable coded bit streams that may be adapted to cater network, device and usage preferences in multimedia usage chains providing universal multimedia access. These adaptations include quality, resolution, frame rate and region of interest scalability and achieved by discarding least significant parts of the bit stream according to the scalability criteria. Such content adaptations may also affect the content protection data, such as watermarks, hidden in the original content. Many wavelet-based robust watermarking techniques robust to such JPEG2000 compression attacks are proposed in the literature. In this paper, we have categorized and evaluated the robustness of such wavelet-based image watermarking techniques against JPEG2000 compression, in terms of algorithmic choices, wavelet kernel selection, subband selection, or watermark selection using a new modular framework. As most of the algorithms use a different set of parametric combination, this analysis is particularly useful to understand the effect of various parameters on the robustness under a common platform and helpful to design any such new algorithm. The analysis also considers the imperceptibility performance of the watermark embedding, as robustness and imperceptibility are two main watermarking properties, complementary to each other.     

Scalable watermark extraction for real-time authentication of JPEG 2000 images

This paper proposes a novel scalable authentication scheme that utilizes the progressive enhancement functionality in JPEG 2000 scalable image coding. The proposed method first models the wavelet-based quality scalable coding to identify the effect of the quantization and de-quantization on wavelet coefficient magnitudes and the data embedded within such coefficients as a watermark. A relationship is then established between the watermark extraction rule and the embedding rule, using the magnitudes of the reconstructed and original coefficients. It ranks the wavelet coefficients according to their ability to retain the embedded watermark data intact under various quantization levels corresponding to quality enhancements. Then watermark data is embedded into wavelet coefficients according to their rank followed by JPEG 2000 embedded coding. At the decoder as more and more quality and resolution layers are decoded the authentication metric is improved, thus resulting in gradually increasing complexity of the authentication process according to the number of quality and resolution enhancements. The low complexity authentication is available at low quality low resolution decoding, enabling real-time authentication for resource constrained applications without affecting the authentication metric. Compared to the existing methods, the proposed method results in highly robust scalable authentication of JPEG 2000 coded images.     

A PCR-Based Assay for the Detection and Differentiation of Potential Fumonisin-Producing Fusarium verticillioides Isolated from Indian Maize Kernels

One hundred and three Fusarium isolates from maize samples collected from different districts of Karnataka state, India, were analyzed with genus-specific, species-specific, and potential fumonisin specific oligonucleotide primers. One set of genus-specific primers ITS F and ITS R based on a highly conserved ITS region of the genus Fusarium were used to differentiate Fusarium species from closely related genera. All the Fusarium species tested scored positive with the ITS pair of primers. Detection and identification of Fusarium verticillioides species was done by using a newly designed reverse primer VERT-R (5′- CGA CTC ACG GCC AGG AAA CC ?3′) based on an intergenic spacer sequence (IGS) combined with an already designed forward primer VERTF-1 (5′-GCG GGA ATT CAA AAG TGG CC -3′) published previously. Out of 103 Fusarium species tested, 83 isolates of F. verticillioides scored positive for VERTF-1/ VERT-R species-specific pair of primers. Further to discriminate potential fumonisin-producing and nonproducing strains of F. verticillioides, the VERTF-1/VERTF-2 set of primers [VERTF-1 (5′-GCG GGA ATT CAA AAG TGG CC -3′) and VERTF-2 (5′-GAG GGC GCG AAA CGG ATC GG -3′)] were used. 64 isolates of F. verticillioides scored positive for VERTF-1/ VERTF-2 pair of primers. In total, three primers, one forward primer VERTF-1 and two reverse primers VERT-R and VERTF-2, were used for the confirmation of F. verticillioides up to the species level and the second pair of primers were used to confirm the potential for fumonisin production. The developed PCR assay should provide a powerful tool for the detection and differentiation of potential fumonisin-producing F. verticillioides strains in a population.     

Nested PCR Method for Early Detection of Fumonisin Producing Fusarium verticillioides in Pure Cultures,Cereal Samples and Plant Parts

Fumonisin-producing Fusarium verticillioides was detected in cereal samples by semi-nested PCR using one forward, VERTF-1, and two reverse primers, VERTR and VERTF-2. A total of 326 Fusarium species isolated from maize, paddy, sorghum, wheat and pearl-millet samples were subjected to a first round of n-PCR with the species specific VERTF-1 and VERTR set of primers which recorded 59.50% of F. verticillioides. Further, second round of n-PCR scored 53.98% of fumonisin-producing F. verticillioides with fumonisin specific VERTF-1 and VERTF-2 set of primers. Maize samples recorded the highest frequency of fumonisin-producing F. verticillioides 40.98%, followed by paddy 33.33%, and sorghum 12.50%. Sensitivity of nested PCR was conducted by whole grain experiment of the cereals, roots and leaves of the cereals by diluting the DNA 10-100 times, in which 1:50, 1:75, and 1:100 diluted samples recorded positive. This method can be used for the early detection of fumonisin producing F. verticillioides occurring on cereals.     

Multi‐criteria IoT resource discovery: a comparative analysis

The growth of real‐world objects with embedded and globally networked sensors allows to consolidate the Internet of things paradigm and increase the number of applications in the domains of ubiquitous and context‐aware computing. The merging between cloud computing and Internet of things named cloud of things will be the key to handle thousands of sensors and their data. One of the main challenges in the cloud of things is context‐aware sensor search and selection. Typically, sensors require to be searched using two or more conflicting context properties. Most of the existing work uses some kind of multi‐criteria decision analysis to perform the sensor search and selection, but does not show any concern for the quality of the selection presented by these methods. In this paper, we analyse the behaviour of the SAW, TOPSIS and VIKOR multi‐objective decision methods and their quality of selection comparing them with the Pareto‐optimality solutions. The gathered results allow to analyse and compare these algorithms regarding their behaviour, the number of optimal solutions and redundancy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.