Use of some essential oils as natural preservatives for butter

Thyme and cumin essential oils were used in the present study in an attempt to prevent butter deterioration during storage at room temperature. Butter oxidation and lipolysis were followed by measuring the acid, peroxide and TBA values. Lipolytic activity and total microbial and lipolytic bacterial counts were also measured. During butter storage, very little change in the peroxide and TBA values were found while a gradual increase in the acid value was noticed. The addition of cumin and thyme oils at 200 ppm to butter caused very little increase in the acid value. The data for lipolytic bacterial counts were in general agreement with the acid values. Thyme and cumin essential oils showed a greater anti-hydrolytic effect and act as superior preservatives compared to BHT.     

Mechanical properties of In-Situ Composites

In this paper, author's results of several years of research work on the mechanical properties of directionally solidified (In-Situ) composites are reviewed. Alloy systems investigated were the fibrous Al-Ni, Fe-MnS and the cobalt base superalloy Co-Cr-C and the lamellar Al-Cu and Co-W. The mechanical behavior of the above systems were studied under both static and dynamic loadings. Static loading involved tension, compression and 3-point bending and the dynamic loading involved rotating bending fatigue, fatigue crack propagation and strain controlled fatigue. It was found that the tensile fracture stress and toughness and the ultimate compressive stress were generally enhanced by increasing growth rate and/or temperature gradient. However, at very high growth rates, the properties were found to decrease due to misalignment of the structure. Models were suggested to describe the static behavior of the composites investigated. Good agreement was found between the model predictions and the experimented results which indicate that the static properties are structural sensitive. On the contrary, the fatigue life of the Al-Al₃ Ni was insensitive to structural changes caused by varying the growth rate. The fatigue crack propagation response of the Co-Cr-C composites was found to follow the Paris Erdogan relation. Examination of the fracture surface confirmed a brittle mode of fracture with fiber cleavage and matrix shearing to link up fiber breaks.     

Effect of phospholipids,free fatty acids and soapstock on colour fixation of cottonseed oil

Effect of some substances present in cottonseed oil, e.g. phospholipids, free fatty acids and soapstock, on colour fixation of the oil was investigated. These components were added to cottonseed oil at different ratios and the oil exposed to a colour fixation treatment (heating at 60 °C for 15 days). Fixed oil samples were then refined and bleached. Spectrophotometric analysis (absorption spectra curves, oil colour, refinability, bleachability) and gossypol content were evaluated. Results revealed that the two samples of phospholipids (commercial from factory and laboratory prepared) added at 4% of crude cottonseed oil increased colour fixation. Free fatty acid added as oleic acid increased colour fixation at 2.5% of oil over than 5% and 10%, whereas soapstock of two sources added at 10% of crude oil did not increase colour fixation.     

Adaptive video streaming testbed design for performance study and assessment of QoE

Hypertext Transfer Protocol adaptive streaming switches between different video qualities, adapting to the network conditions, and avoids stalling streamed frames over high‐oscillation client's throughput improving the users' quality of experience (QoE). Quality of experience has become the most important parameter to lead the service providers to know about the end‐user feedback. Implementing Hypertext Transfer Protocol adaptive streaming applications to find out QoE in real‐life scenarios of vast networks becomes more challenging and complex task regarding to cost, agile, time, and decisions. In this paper, a virtualized network testbed to virtualize various machines to support implementing experiments of adaptive video streaming has been developed. Within the test study, the metrics which demonstrate performance of QoE are investigated, respectively, including initial delay (ie, startup delay at the beginning of playback a video), frequency switches (ie, number of times the quality is changed), accumulative video time (ie, number and length of stalls), CPU usage, and battery energy consumption. Furthermore, the relation between effective parameters of QoS on the aforementioned metrics for different segment length is investigated. Experimental results show that the proposed virtualized system is agile, easy to install and use, and costs less than real testbeds. Moreover, the subjective and objective performance studies of QoE evaluation in the system have proven that the segment lengths of 6 to 8 seconds were faired and more efficient than others according to the investigated parameters.     

High payload image steganography scheme with minimum distortion based on distinction grade value method

Presently, the design and development of an effective image steganography system are facing several challenges including the low capacity, poor robustness and imperceptibility. To surmount such limitations, it is important to improve the capacity and security of the steganography system while maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). Based on these factors, this study is aimed to design and develop a distinction grade value (DGV) method to effectively embed the secret data into a cover image for achieving a robust steganography scheme. The design and implementation of the proposed scheme involved three phases. First, a new encryption method called the shuffle the segments of secret message (SSSM) was incorporated with an enhanced Huffman compression algorithm to improve the text security and payload capacity of the scheme. Second, the Fibonacci-based image transformation decomposition method was used to extend the pixel’s bit from 8 to 12 for improving the robustness of the scheme. Third, an improved embedding method was utilized by integrating a random block/pixel selection with the DGV and implicit secret key generation for enhancing the imperceptibility of the scheme. The performance of the proposed scheme is assessed experimentally to determine the imperceptibility, security, robustness and capacity. The resistance of the proposed scheme is tested against the statistical, χ², Histogram and non-structural steganalysis detection attacks. The obtained PSNR values revealed the accomplishment of the higher imperceptibility and security by the proposed DGV scheme while maintaining higher capacity compared to the reported findings. In short, the proposed steganography scheme outperformed the commercially available data hiding schemes, thereby resolved the existing issues.

     

Propagation Loss Measurement of Wireless Body Area Network at 2.4 GHz and 3.35 GHz Bands

The main purpose of this work is to measure and analyze the propagation loss of the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) in frequency and time domain at two frequency bands, namely 2.4 GHz band with 80 MHz bandwidth and 3.35 GHz band with 500 MHz bandwidth. Four different scenarios (front to front, front to back, front to off-body node and back to off-body node) using many antenna´s locations on the body are used to investigate the channel response (path loss) of WBAN. It is found that the front to front channels and the front to off-body node channels have a low fading. The front to back channels and the back to off-body node channels have a high fading that can be approximated by the Distorted Rayleigh fading. Thus the WBAN range for the front to off-body node scenario is more than the range of the back to off-body node scenario.

     

Stabilization of Single‐Input LTI Systems by Proportional‐Derivative Feedback

This article presents an efficient solution to the stabilization pole placement problem for single‐input linear time‐invariant (LTI) systems by proportional‐derivative (PD) feedback. For a controllable system, any arbitrary closed‐loop poles can be placed in order to achieve the desired closed‐loop system performance. Its derivation is based on the transformation of linear system into Hessenberg form by a special coordinate transformation before solving the pole placement problem. The available degrees of freedom offered by PD feedback are utilized to obtain closed‐loop systems with small gains. So, the minimization problem for a suitably chosen cost function is formulated. Simulation results are included to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Maximizing lifetime of large-scale wireless sensor networks using multi-objective whale optimization algorithm

Telecommunication Systems - The sink nodes in large-scale wireless sensor networks (LSWSNs) are responsible for receiving and processing the collected data from sensor nodes. Identifying the...