Exploitation of essential oil extracted from Tunisian Laurus nobilis for the development of PET antibacterial sutures

The main purpose of this study is the use of a Tunisian bio resource for the improvement of mechanical and physical properties of braided polyethylene terephthalate (PET) sutures. In this study, antibacterial PET sutures were developed using Tunisian essential oil of Laurus nobilis. A new lubrication process was proposed for this fact. The essential oil of L. nobilis was selected because of its antibacterial properties as well as analgesic, antiseptic, antiviral, and anti-infectious proprieties. Optimized extraction process of essential oil was also determined. Characteristics and cytotoxicity of extracted essential oil were also investigated. In order to study the impact of lubrication conditions on PET suture performances, mechanical properties and antibacterial effects of braided sutures were studied. The obtained results prove that sutures lubrication improves suture knot efficiency and leads to smoother surface. Developed sutures show also obvious antibacterial effect against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538 G (+) colonies.     

Global outliers detection in wireless sensor networks: A novel approach integrating time-series analysis,entropy, and random forest-based classification.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted greater attention worldwide due to their practicality in monitoring, communicating, and reporting specific physical phenomena. The data collected by WSNs is often inaccurate as a result of unavoidable environmental factors, which may include noise, signal weakness, or intrusion attacks depending on the specific situation. Sending high-noise data has negative effects not just on data accuracy and network reliability, but also regarding the decision-making processes in the base station. Anomaly detection, or outlier detection, is the process of detecting noisy data amidst the contexts thus described. The literature contains relatively few noise detection techniques in the context of WSNs, particularly for outlier-detection algorithms applying time series analysis, which considers the effective neighbors to ensure a global-collaborative detection. Hence, the research presented in this article is intended to design and implement a global outlier-detection approach, which allows us to find and select appropriate neighbors to ensure an adaptive collaborative detection based on time-series analysis and entropy techniques. The proposed approach applies a random forest algorithm for identifying the best results. To measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach, a comprehensive and real scenario provided by the Intel Berkeley Research Laboratory has been simulated. Noisy data have been injected into the collected data randomly. The results obtained from the experiment then conducted experimentation demonstrate that our approach can detect anomalies with up to 99% accuracy.     

Digitizing radio-over-fiber transceiver based on optical tunable encoder and optical codewords

Radio over fiber (RoF) is a very attractive and promising technology for wireless access networks, because of several advantages such as providing huge bandwidth, inherent immunity to electromagnetic interference and reduced power consumption. The analog RoF networks cannot be used for the transmission of radio signals over long lengths of fiber due to the distortions induced by dispersion and nonlinearity of the optical link. The digitized RoF communication presents an interesting alternative to circumvent the limitations of ARoF networks. In this paper, we propose an all-optical DRoF (Digital RoF) scheme based on the optical encoding technique and optical codewords instead of modulation techniques. The proposed scheme is composed of an all-optical sampler, an all-optical thresholder and an all-optical encoder. The proposed all-optical DRoF design is simulated by implementing its three main components using the simulation platform, Optisystem. We have also studied the capacity of the proposed encoding architecture in terms of the maximum number of chips that can be supported. Furthermore, ARoF, DRoF and the proposed all-optical DRoF systems are compared based on the minimum bit error rate, the maximum quality factor, and the complexity and implementation cost.     

Two Extended Programmable BCH Soft Decoders Using Least Reliable Bits Reprocessing

This paper proposes two Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) soft decoders suitable for high-rate codes with medium to large word length. The proposed decoders extend the correcting capability by providing a programmable performance gain according to the choice of the extra compensated bits p, with a theoretical maximum likelihood decoding when 2t+p approaches the codeword size n, where t is the correcting capability of the code under algebraic decoding. Our proposed architectures for the proposed algorithms use pipelined arithmetic units, leading to a reduction in the critical paths. This allows for an increase in the operating frequency by up to m/2 times compared to algebraic decoders, where m is the Galois field size. Our proposed decoders operate only on the least reliable bits, which leads to a reduction in the decoder complexity by removing the Chien search procedure.     

Higher Increase in Plasma DHA in Females Compared to Males Following EPA Supplementation May Be Influenced by a Polymorphism in ELOVL2: An Exploratory Study

Young adult females have higher blood docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), 22:6n-3 levels than males, and this is believed to be due to higher DHA synthesis rates, although DHA may also accumulate due to a longer half-life or a combination of both. However, sex differences in blood fatty acid responses to eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), 20:5n-3 or DHA supplementation have not been fully investigated. In this exploratory analysis, females and males (n = 14–15 per group) were supplemented with 3 g/day EPA, 3 g/day DHA, or olive oil control for 12 weeks. Plasma was analyzed for sex effects at baseline and changes following 12 weeks' supplementation for fatty acid levels and carbon-13 signature (δ¹³C). Following EPA supplementation, the increase in plasma DHA in females (+23.8 ± 11.8, nmol/mL ± SEM) was higher than males (−13.8 ± 9.2, p < 0.01). The increase in plasma δ¹³C-DHA of females (+2.79 ± 0.31, milliUrey (mUr ± SEM) compared with males (+1.88 ± 0.44) did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.10). The sex effect appears driven largely by increased plasma DHA in the AA genotype of females (+58.8 ± 11.5, nmol/mL ± SEM, n = 5) compared to GA + GG in females (+4.34 ± 13.5, n = 9) and AA in males (−29.1 ± 17.2, n = 6) for rs953413 in the ELOVL2 gene (p < 0.001). In conclusion, EPA supplementation increases plasma DHA levels in females compared to males, which may be dependent on the AA genotype for rs953413 in ELOVL2.     

Active packaging gelatin films based on chitosan/Arabic gum/coconut oil Pickering nano emulsions

This investigation intended at fabricating gelatin active packaging films based on nano-sized droplets of coconut oil emulsified by Pickering emulsion (PE) using chitosan/Arabic gum (CH/AG) nanoparticles (NPs) as a stabilizer and in the presence of titanium dioxide NP (TiO₂ NPs) as an extra antimicrobial agent. The developed films were characterized by attenuated total reflectance–Fourier transmittance infrared, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscope. The antimicrobial, antioxidant, water vapor sorption isotherm, and mechanical properties of the prepared films were assessed. The (CH/AG) NPs weight ratios (1:1, 1:2, and 2:1) impact on particle size (PS), zeta potential, wettability, morphology, and in vitro cumulative release was investigated. The (CH/AG) NPs (1:2) exhibits the small PS (246.4 nm). (CH/AG) NPs and PE exhibit spherical and oval morphologies. The CH/AG (1:2) exhibits the higher water contact angle (85.7^o). At the oil volume fraction (α) = 1.0, nearly 81% of the entrapped oil released from the NPs. Gelatin films enriched with P at α = 1.0 exhibits two-fold increasing scavenging activity % (35.69 ± 0.56) compared with control film (14.8 ± 0.25). The films have a considerable antibacterial and antifungal activity for all test microorganism. However, control sample did not show antimicrobial activity against Bacillus cereus and Candida albicans.     

Feasibility of Dynamic Acid Corrosion Control in Oil Well Tubing

Matrix acidizing operations are regarded as one of the most important and familiar operations in Iraqi oil wells. These operations are carried out in a routine way, injecting 15% hydrochloric acid with 1% ACI (the acid corrosion inhibitor used with HCl acid in southern Iraq) for stimulation of carbonate formation. Since oil production was started in Iraq, the acidizing jobs have been carried out using the above concentration. In spite of the experience in performing the acidizing jobs in the southern part of the Iraqi oil fields, it has been found that the above concentration of ACI is high for 15% HCl. An experimental study has been carried out to investigate the corrosion in oil well tubing, which is of great importance in well acidizing operations, to establish a successful acid corrosion control in oil well production tubing. The investigation was carried out on coupons of three types with two different concentrations of hydrochloric acid (15%, 28%). The investigation was extended to cover the effects of the following: (1) volume of acid (milliliters)/area of test coupon (square inches), VIA; (2) agitation of acid; (3) effective contact time; (4) concentration of ACI (acid corrosion inhibitor). Comparison of static and dynamic tests was covered in this work. It is found that as VIA increases, acid corrosion rate decreases for all values of ACI concentration to a certain limit, and also that increasing the effective contact time increases the rate of corrosion. The study proves the importance of dynamic conditions which depict real or actual field circumstances.     

Automated segmentation of stromal tissue in histology images using a voting Bayesian model

Over the past two decades, digital histology has been clinically approved for the various cancer diagnosis and prognosis tasks including proliferation rate estimation (PRE). Histology images contain two types of regions: epithelial and stromal. PRE is clinically restricted to epithelial tissue because stromal cells do not become cancerous. PRE has very high inter- and intra-pathologist variability and especially among juniors. The major cause of this variability is the stromal area. In this paper, we digitally segment out all stromal areas and present the pathologist with only epithelial areas for PRE. This reduces inter- and intra-pathologist variability. To that end, we propose a Bayesian voting-based model for removal of stromal cells utilizing cells texture and color. Our results on fifty clinical images show that pathologists’ PRE become more accurate and reproducible. Furthermore, PRE of expert pathologists shows very high inter-observer reliability after our fully automated segmentation. We validate our proposed model by testing three aspects and we find: (i) the effect of our segmentation on the clinical decision is the same before and after our segmentation. (ii) the segmentation similarity dice measure is 86.78 % which is a high similarity level. (iii) the time reduction of the pathologist is, on average, over 39 % which also supports the clinical benefit of our proposed work.     

A Long Acting Ophthalmic Gel Formulations of Atenolol

The main aim of pharmacotherapeutics, is the attainment of an effective drug concentration at the intended site of action for a sufficient period of time to elicit the response. In this study a trial was made to formulate atenolol, which is a beta-adrenergic blocker in a topical ophthalmic gel. Two polymers were used in this study, carboxymethylcellulose and sodium alginate in different concentrations. Atenolol was used in concentrations 0.5, 1, and 1.5% w/v. The in vitro release study was carried out. The results showed that the release rate of atenolol from gel preparations decreased as an inverse function of polymer concentration, while the release rate of the drug increased as the initial concentration increased. The data of drug release from the two polymers in different concentrations was plotted against the square root of time, and the diffusion coefficients (D), were calculated from the slope of the equation.

Intra-ocular pressure (IOP) measurements of the rabbit's eye treated with 1% w/v atenolol solution, and 1% w/v atenolol in two gel formulations with different concentrations of the polymer were determined. The two gel formulations showed that these polymers extended the duration of pressure reducing effect to 8 hr, when compared with atenolol solution. Area above the curve (AAC), maximum response, maximum time of response (t_max), and the duration of action were calculated.

The overall results of this study indicated that the gel formulations of atenolol could be used for the development of a long-acting ophthalmic formulation.