Adsorptive Removal of Manganese Ions from Polluted Aqueous Media by Glauconite Clay-Functionalized Chitosan Nanocomposites

The presence of Mn(II) in water exceeding the permitted concentration limits declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) influences individuals, animals, and the ecosystem negatively. Therefore, there is a necessity for an efficient material to eliminate this potentially toxic element from wastewater. We herein focused on the adsorptive removal of Mn(II) ions from polluted aqueous media using natural Egyptian glauconite clay (G) and its nanocomposites with modified chitosan (CS). We applied modified chitosan with glutaraldehyde (GL), ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), and cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB). The utilized nanocomposites were referred to as GL-CS/G, EDTA-GL-CS/G, SDS-CS/G, and CTAB-CS/G, respectively. The point of zero charge values of the materials were estimated. The adsorption properties of the G clay and its nanocomposites toward the removal of Mn(II) ions from polluted aqueous media as well as the adsorption mechanism were explored using a batch technique. The glauconite (G) and its nanocomposites: GL-CS/G, CTAB-CS/G, EDTA-GL-CS/G, and SDS-CS/G, exhibited maximum adsorption capacity values of 3.60, 24.0, 26.0, 27.0, and 27.9 mg g^?1, respectively. The adsorption results fitted well the Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetic models. The estimated thermodynamic parameters: ΔH° (from 1.03 to 5.55 kJ/mol) and ΔG° (from ? 14.5 to ? 18.8 kJ/mol), indicated that Mn(II) ion adsorption process was endothermic, spontaneous, and physisorption controlled. Furthermore, the obtained adsorption results are encouraging and revealing a great potentiality for using the modified adsorbents as accessible adsorbents for Mn(II) ion removal from polluted aqueous solutions, depending on their reusability, high stability, and good adsorption capacities.

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Constructal design of flat tubes cooled by natural convection

A set of vertical flat tubes cooled by natural convection and placed in a finite size space is designed based on the constructal law. The constraint in this design is the size of the space where the tubes are placed. The freedom inside the space is the distance between the tubes. When the constructal law is applied, the optimal distance between the tubes is determined. Rayleigh numbers are taken as (Ra = 10³, 10⁴, and 10⁵). The dimensionless tube diameter (tube diameter/tube height) is changed from (D* = 0.2) to (D* = 1) (circular tube). All the tubes are heated to the same wall temperature. The air used to cool the tubes has a Prandtl number (Pr = 0.72). The equations of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy for steady, two-dimensional, and incompressible flow are solved by the finite volume method. The result showed that the best or optimal distance at a given Rayleigh number remains constant for all tube diameters. The result also showed that the number of the small diameter tubes must be more than the number of the large-diameter tubes for the same Rayleigh number and the same size of the space to make the heat flow from the tubes to the coolant easier.     

Minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRMR) based feature selection from endoscopic images for automatic gastrointestinal polyp detection

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In this paper, a computer based system has been proposed as a support to gastrointestinal polyp detection. It can detect and classify gastrointestinal polyps...     

Effect of cold atmospheric plasma on the physicochemical and functional properties of myofibrillar protein from Alaska pollock (Theragra chalcogramma)

This study aimed to investigate the effect of cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) on the physicochemical and functional properties of myofibrillar protein isolated from Alaska pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) muscle. Free sulfhydryl content, surface hydrophobicity, turbidity, differential scanning calorimetry, SDS-PAGE, heat-induced myofibrillar protein gel properties and water holding capacity were determined to evaluate the effect of CAP treatment on protein properties. CAP treatment from 10 to 60 kV for 10 min significantly (P < 0.05) increased the water holding capacity, textural properties and colour properties of heat-induced myofibrillar protein gel. As treatment voltage increased, free sulfhydryl content decreased significantly, while the turbidity and surface hydrophobicity of myofibrillar protein were increased. DSC data showed enhancement of thermal stability of the treated samples; however, the electrophoretic profile displayed a significant reduction in the band's intensity of protein at a higher voltage. These results suggest that cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) treatment could be used as an alternative approach to enhance the gelling properties of myofibrillar protein from Alaska pollock.     

USAD: undetectable steganographic approach in DCT domain

In this work, we propose a new adaptive chaotic steganographic method based on the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and a reversible mapping function. The mapping function is used to map the secret bits into their corresponding symbols. This mapping technique has to preserve the same dynamics, properties and distribution of the original DCT coefficients. The novelty of our approach is based on the adaptive selection phase of embedding spots. This selection is established through a blindness condition which is applied over each image of the database. The proposed embedding scheme within the middle DCT coefficients shows lower probability of detection and higher flexibility in extraction. We evaluate the detection of our method using the Ensemble Classifiers and a set of frequency and spatial domain feature extractors such as the Spatial domain Rich Model (SRM) features, Chen et al.'s 486-dimensional both inter- and intra-block Markov-based features and Liu's 216-dimensional adaptive steganography-based features.     

Maximization of heat transfer density from a vertical array of flat tubes in cross flow under fixed pressure drop using constructal design

The density of heat transfer rate from a vertical array of flat tubes in cross flow is maximized under fixed pressure drop using constructal design. With the constructal design, the tube arrangement is found such that the heat currents from the tubes to the coolant flow easily. The constraint in the present constructal design is the volume where the tubes are arranged inside it. The two degrees of freedom available inside the volume are the tube‐to‐tube spacing and the length of the flat part of the tubes (tube flatness). The tubes are heated with constant surface temperature. The equations of continuity, momentums, and energy for steady, two‐dimensional, and laminar forced convection are solved by means of a finite‐volume method. The ranges of the present study are Bejan number (dimensionless pressure drop) (10³ ≤ Be ≤ 10⁵) and tube flatness (dimensionless length of the tube flat part) (0 ≤ F ≤ 0.8). The coolant used is air with Prandtl number (Pr = 0.72). The results reveal that the maximum heat transfer density decreases when the tube flatness decreases at constant Bejan number. At constant tube flatness, the heat transfer density increases as the dimensionless pressure drop (Bejan number) increases. Also, the optimal tube‐to‐tube spacing is constant, irrespective of the tube flatness at constant Bejan number.     

An energy-aware forecasting-based framework using a novel moving coordinate scheme for sensor real-time communications

Wireless Networks - In order to save on the energy expended by a sensor node in its communications with the sink, forecasting-based frameworks have recently been proposed. Those frameworks...     

Traffic Queuing Management in the Internet of Things: An Optimized RED Algorithm Based Approach

Congestion control is one of the main obstacles in cyberspace traffic. Overcrowding in internet traffic may cause several problems; such as high packet hold-up, high packet dropping, and low packet output. In the course of data transmission for various applications in the Internet of things, such problems are usually generated relative to the input. To tackle such problems, this paper presents an analytical model using an optimized Random Early Detection (RED) algorithm-based approach for internet traffic management. The validity of the proposed model is checked through extensive simulation-based experiments. An analysis is observed for different functions on internet traffic. Four performance metrics are taken into consideration, namely, the possibility of packet loss, throughput, mean queue length and mean queue delay. Three sets of experiments are observed with varying simulation results. The experiments are thoroughly analyzed and the best packet dropping operation with minimum packet loss is identified using the proposed model.     

Protected Fair Secret Sharing Based Bivariate Asymmetric Polynomials in Satellite Network

Verifiable secret sharing mainly solves the cheating behavior between malicious participants and the ground control center in the satellite network. The verification stage can verify the effectiveness of secret shares issued by the ground control center to each participant and verify the effectiveness of secret shares shown by participants. We use a lot of difficult assumptions based on mathematical problems in the verification stage, such as solving the difficult problem of the discrete logarithm, large integer prime factorization, and so on. Compared with other verifiable secret sharing schemes designed for difficult problems under the same security, the verifiable secret sharing scheme based on the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) system has the advantages of less computational overhead and shorter key. At present, the binary polynomial is a single secret scheme and cannot provide effective verification. Therefore, based on a Protected Verifiable Synchronous Multi Secret Sharing (PVS-MSS) scheme, this paper is designed based on bivariate asymmetric polynomials. The advanced verifiable attribute is introduced into the Protected Secret Sharing (PSS) scheme. This paper extends the protected synchronous multi-secret sharing scheme based on bivariate polynomial design. The ECC system constructs the security channel between the ground control center and participants and constructs the verification algorithm. Through the verification algorithm, any participant can verify the consistency and effectiveness of the secret shadow and secret share received from other participants or presented by the secret distribution center. Therefore, no additional key agreement protocol is required; participants do not need to negotiate the session key for encryption; the secret share polynomial can generate the session key between participants and speed up the secret reconstruction process. The verification stage has lower computational complexity than the verifiable scheme constructed by Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA) and other encryption methods. Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) is used to update the secret shadow. The secret shadow does not need to be updated with the change of the scheme shared secret, and the public value update efficiency is higher. Reduce the complexity of sharing secret updates in a synchronous multi-secret sharing scheme.