Rind of the rambutan, Nephelium lappaceum, a potential source of natural antioxidants

The rind of rambutan, which is normally discarded was found to contain extremely high antioxidant activity when assessed using several methods. Although having a yield of only 18%, the ethanolic rambutan rind extract had a total phenolic content of 762 ± 10 mg GAE/g extract, which is comparable to that of a commercial preparation of grape seed extract. Comparing the extract’s pro-oxidant capabilities with vitamin C, α-tocopherol, grape seed and green tea, the rind had the lowest pro-oxidant capacity. In addition, the extract at 100 μg/ml was seen to limit oxidant-induced cell death (DPPH at 50 μM) by apoptosis to an extent similar to that of grape seed. The extracts were not cytotoxic to normal mouse fibroblast cells or splenocytes while the powderised rind was seen to have heavy metals contents far below the permissible levels for nutraceuticals. Our study for the first time reveals the high phenolic content, low pro-oxidant capacity and strong antioxidant activity of the extract from rind of Nephelium lappaceum. This extract, either alone or in combination with other active principles, can be used in cosmetic, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical applications.     

Violence detection in videos for an intelligent surveillance system using MoBSIFT and movement filtering algorithm

Pattern Analysis and Applications - Action recognition is an active research area in computer vision as it has enormous applications in today’s world, out of which, recognizing violent action...     

Review on recent advances of zinc substituted cobalt ferrite nanoparticles: Synthesis characterization and diverse applications

Researchers have taken a prodigious consideration in characterizing and synthesizing zinc substituted cobalt ferrite nanoparticles because of their substantial applications across diverse technological and industrial fields. Zinc substituted cobalt ferrite nanoparticles are a class of lenient magnetic nanomaterials, which have potentially high magnetic, optical, electrical, and dielectric properties. These properties include a high value of permeability, low power losses, permittivity, saturation magnetization, coercivity, resistivity, and other beneficial properties that make them promise candidates for applications in various fields. These ferrites are also used in biomedical areas such as MRI and cancer treatments. In electronic fields, zinc substituted cobalt ferrite nanoparticles are used to make transducers, transformers, biosensors, and sensors. Apart from these advantages, they are found in our everyday electronic and electrical appliances like LED bulb, refrigerator, mobile charger, TV, microwave oven, juicer, washing machine, mixer, iron, printer, laptop, mobile, desktop, etc. Hence, the current review reports some properties of these spinel ferrites and emphasizes the different synthesis techniques that can be used to prepare them. Afterward, the impact of dopant on the materials' properties, the characterization techniques, and the momentous application in the present era have been well discussed.     

A survey of multiscale modeling: Foundations,historical milestones,current status,and future prospects

Research problems in the domains of physical, engineering, biological sciences often span multiple time and length scales, owing to the complexity of information transfer underlying mechanisms. Multiscale modeling (MSM) and high-performance computing (HPC) have emerged as indispensable tools for tackling such complex problems. We review the foundations, historical developments, and current paradigms in MSM. A paradigm shift in MSM implementations is being fueled by the rapid advances and emerging paradigms in HPC at the dawn of exascale computing. Moreover, amidst the explosion of data science, engineering, and medicine, machine learning (ML) integrated with MSM is poised to enhance the capabilities of standard MSM approaches significantly, particularly in the face of increasing problem complexity. The potential to blend MSM, HPC, and ML presents opportunities for unbound innovation and promises to represent the future of MSM and explainable ML that will likely define the fields in the 21st century.     

A Generative Computer-Aided Process Planning System for Prismatic Components

This paper deals with design and development of a generative computer-aided process planning (CAPP) system for prismatic components and named PSG-CAPP. The proposed CAPP system has been divided into three modules. The first module is concerned with feature extraction. The second and third modules deal with planning the set-up, machine selection, cutting tool selection, cutting parameter selection, and generation of process plan sheet. The whole CAPP system is developed using Visual Basic 6.0 as front end and Oracle 7.3 as back end. The SolidWorks98 plus has been used for modelling, and feature extraction has been implemented using a program written in Visual Basic 6.0. The speciality of the developed CAPP system is that it is linked with the CAD module and it extracts the majority of features automatically prior to process planning. The developed CAPP system has been tested with aerospace components. The main feature of the proposed CAPP system is its ability to handle a variety of prismatic components and generate process plans for them. A case study has been included to highlight the potential of the CAPP system. ID="A1"Correspondance and offprint requests to: Professor P. V. Mohanram, Department of Mechanical Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Peelamedu, Coimbatore 641004, India. E-mail: msadaiah@yahoo.com     

Performance assessment of PID and IMC tuning methods for a mixing process with time delay

A flow process with time delay has been considered for modeling and control. A dilute solution of sodium chloride is used as tracer and an online conductivity measurement unit as sensor and recorder. The objective of the current study is to design control algorithms and present corresponding robust control analysis for the process. The control methodologies considered are (i) conventional PID control and (ii) internal model control (IMC). The control structures are comparatively analyzed using standard robustness measures for stability and performance. Of the two control algorithms, conventional PID and IMC, IMC exhibits faster settling time, no overshoot, better set-point tracking and disturbance rejection, and good robust performance than the PID control scheme.     

Greed is good: Approximating independent sets in sparse and bounded-degree graphs

Theminimum-degree greedy algorithm, or Greedy for short, is a simple and well-studied method for finding independent sets in graphs. We show that it achieves a performance ratio of (Δ+2)/3 for approximating independent sets in graphs with degree bounded by Δ. The analysis yields a precise characterization of the size of the independent sets found by the algorithm as a function of the independence number, as well as a generalization of Turán’s bound. We also analyze the algorithm when run in combination with a known preprocessing technique, and obtain an improved performance ratio on graphs with average degree , improving on the previous best of Hochbaum. Finally, we present an efficient parallel and distributed algorithm attaining the performance guarantees of Greedy. Gordon Gekko [29]. A preliminary version of this paper appeared at the 26th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1994. This work was done while both authors were at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Hokuriku.